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THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
Br THE SJME JUTHO^ 
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS. Reminiscences. 
 
 ' In thi« comely volume, covering the years 
 from 1891-1911, Mrs, Hinkson continues 
 the itory of her literary life, a story begun in a 
 previous book, Tv)eniy-^ive Tears. A sequel 
 is always a dangerous experiment, but in this 
 case the experiment is abundantly justified. 
 The new reminiscences are told with a greater 
 zest, a richer humour, a more potent charm. 
 The result is a most enjoyable and thoroughly 
 companionable book, a revelation, not merely 
 of a very engaging personality, but of the artistic 
 temperament at its sanest and sunniest.' 
 
 IVestminster Gaiette. 
 
THE YEARS OF 
 THE SHADOW 
 
 BY 
 
 KATHARINE TYNAN H;^U5<?v, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'TWENTY-FIVE YEARS,' 'THE MIDDLE YEARS,' ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 
 
 1919 
 
P\5\c^05'^ 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAT. 
 
 I. WHAT WE CAME BACK TO 
 II. THE NEW HOME . 
 
 III. CLAREBEG AND A. E. 
 
 IV. YOUNG POETS 
 V. GOOD STORIES 
 
 VI. MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 
 VII. SIR DAVID AND LADY HARREL 
 Vlir. DUNSANY 
 
 IX. THE GENESIS OF THE REBELLION 
 X. FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS 
 XI. HUMOURS AND EXPERIENCES 
 XII. THE BEST OF FRIENDS . 
 XIII. ROME .... 
 JCIV. THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 
 
 XV. THE GREAT SUMMER 
 XVI. WAR .... 
 XVII. LAST DAYS AT SHANKILL 
 XVIII. THE COUNTY OF MAYO . 
 XIX. 1915 .... 
 XX. CHIEFLY LORD GREY 
 XXI. THE REBELLION . 
 XXII. A priest's STORY , 
 XXIII. AFTER THE REBELLION . 
 XXIV. JOHN HIGGINS 
 
 I 
 
 9 
 
 16 
 
 24 
 36 
 45 
 56 
 65 
 74 
 83 
 
 91 
 
 100 
 
 III 
 
 123 
 
 134 
 142 
 152 
 161 
 170 
 180 
 188 
 196 
 204 
 216 
 
viii THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 CHAP. i"AG£ 
 
 XXV. THE REBELLION AS SEEN BY JOHN HIGGINS . . 223 
 
 XXVI. BROOKHILL 233 
 
 XXVII. PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD . . . 242 
 
 XXVIII. FRIENDS ........ 252 
 
 XXIX. THE COLD WINTER ...... 260 
 
 XXX. ALLEVIATIONS . . .' . . . . 269 
 
 XXXI. ONE OF THB SUMMERS . ■ , • • • 278 
 
 XXXII. FRANCIS LEDWIDGE ...... 288 
 
 XXXIII. THE SPRING ....... 299 
 
 XXXIV. IN WHICH THE STORY IS TAKEN UP AGAIN . . 3O3 
 XXXV. THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS . . . -311 
 
 XXXVI. SOLDIER-TALK ....... 321 
 
 XXXVII. THE END OF THE SUMMER ..... 335 
 
 INDEX 
 
 343 
 
THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT WE CAME BACK TO 
 
 We came back to a changed Ireland. We had left it — 
 that part of it with which we were best acquainted — ^in 
 the passion and stress of Parnellism and Anti-ParnelHsm. 
 A good deal of water had flowed under the bridges since 
 then, and as far as politics were concerned — surface 
 politics, at all events — we found people tepidly liking and 
 tepidly disliking Home Rule, in which I think no one 
 believed. By the way, what a duU name ! The thing 
 deserved to be scrapped for its name alone. 
 
 Also, superficially perhaps, the giving and entertaining 
 Ireland we remembered had ceased to be. Perhaps it 
 was there all the time though we did not know it. 
 Perhaps it was only that we returned to the Anglo-Irish 
 having gone away from the Celts, and the Anglo-Irish 
 of the suburbs, who are very often remarkably like the 
 same class in England. They were very kind and friendly, 
 but tea-giving was the order of the day, not lunch-giving, 
 nor dinner-giving on a lavish scale as we remembered it. 
 Dublin priests had ceased to entertain the laity to any 
 great extent, very much against the grain, I am sure, for 
 Hospitality when she is hunted will find her last refuge 
 and sanctuary under the roof of an Irish priest's house. 
 
 We found all our new friends selling something. It 
 might be pedigree fowls, or it might be dogs, or perhaps 
 carnation-sHps. Anyhow, we marvelled at the new 
 spirit of commerciahsm ; and wondered uneasily if 
 Ireland was going to learn the virtue she had always 
 abhorred, the mean virtue, which may easily become a 
 
 A 
 
2 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 vice — ^Thrift. Even the children were selling something. 
 But, after all, perhaps it was only the change from the 
 Celt to the Anglo-Irish. In the old days I had not 
 studied the columns of the Irish Times through which 
 the exchange and barter is carried on. Perhaps the 
 Anglo-Irish were always seUing something, only I did 
 not know it. 
 
 Sometimes the readjusting of things was difficult. A 
 lady came to see me one day with a little fox terrier in her 
 motor. I discovered the dog when she was going 
 away, and made friends with him. She looked at me 
 speculatively. ' I am so unhappy about him,' she said. 
 ' Do you know a good home for him ? I am going into 
 a flat in Dubhn — ^no place for a dog— and he has been so 
 accustomed to a free life.' 
 
 I looked at the dog. It is not in me to refuse a home 
 to a dog. I had three already who were not at all likely 
 to take kindly to a grown-up addition to the family, arid 
 there were other factors to be reckoned with. I, myself, 
 did not want another dog, but I threw prudence to the 
 winds. ' Oh, if you want a home for him,' I said, 
 ' I 'U take him.' I saw uneasiness in her eye. Before 
 she could mention the price I changed the subject. She 
 went off hurriedly, which was a relief. I wanted to 
 avoid, to overlook the dog, and he was very persistent 
 in claiming my attention. After that experience I was 
 more careful. 
 
 Perhaps the commercial instinct was something super- 
 imposed, and not entirely germane even to the Anglo- 
 Irish. After all, let me confess that if Thrift enters the 
 soul of the Celt he becomes a thousand times harder 
 and more close-fisted than the Anglo-Irish. Perhaps the 
 traffic in things, usually on an infinitesimal scale, con- 
 ducted by the Anglo-Irish woman, is really a substitute 
 for the card-playing and race-going of her Celtic sister. 
 There is perhaps a tingle of excitement even in seUing 
 camation-sHps at twelve for sixpence. The lives of 
 women before the war, between the aristocracy and the 
 workers, were desperately dull. 
 
WHAT WE CAME BACK TO 3 
 
 The commercial instinct was certainly only skin-deep 
 in the case of our neighbour who bred and sold Poms, 
 and obtained very high prices for them. I think she 
 hoped for a time that we would be among her customers ; 
 but, since we did not buy a puppy, she very sweetly 
 presented the youngest of us with one, who is the joy of 
 the house, despite his being . a German. A Scottish 
 lady, another neighbour, was very much astonished that 
 any one who could command a large price for a puppy 
 should bestow it as a gift. 
 
 ' Is that one of Mrs. M 's puppies ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' How much did you pay for him ? ' 
 
 ' She gave him to us.' 
 
 The lady turned her eyes wildly to every part of the 
 horizon and up to heaven, repeating in ascending tones 
 of amazement : 
 
 ' Gave / Gave / ! Gave ! ! ! Did you say Gave ? ' 
 
 It was not the first nor the last time I realised the 
 truth of the saying, ' All things come to him who only 
 knows how to wait.' I shall give another instance, for 
 which I must go back to years and days long anterior to 
 the Years of the Shadow. 
 
 It was in the early years of my marriage, and I was a 
 member of the (London) Irish Literary Society. I had 
 joined it in the irresponsible time of my girlhood, when 
 a subscription to a society counted for nothing. Later 
 the responsible time came, and there were more uses for 
 guineas than paying them as subscriptions to societies 
 I could not attend and clubs I could not use. I ought to 
 have resigned, of course. For some reason I did not. 
 My subscription got into arrears. Applications increased 
 in urgency and even became threatening. There was a 
 delightful but alarmiiig afternoon when Mr. A. P. Graves 
 had a party at the Society's rooms to meet the most 
 beautiful and saintly of old poets, Aubrey de Vere. I 
 talked to the poet, my short-sighted eyes roving anxiously 
 about in search of my own name on the walls, posted as 
 a defaulter. That had been the last threat. I did not 
 
4 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 find it, if it was there, and the party was a very pleasant 
 one. 
 
 Afterwards the society changed its tactics, and all the 
 influential members appealed to me in turn not to leave 
 them, advancing various arguments, on patriotic, literary, 
 friendly and other grounds. Finally, as I remained 
 obdurate, the secretary wrote that since they could not 
 afford to lose m« I had been unanimously adopted as 
 an Honorary Vice-President. 
 
 Our first house after our return to Ireland was a 
 temporary one in Sorrento Terrace, Dalkey, which sits 
 on its rocks over Killiney Bay with a truly Italian effect, 
 gazing away over the most beautiful of bays held within 
 a half-moon of hills, beyond them the mountains. 
 Sorrento Terrace is one end of the crescent, Bray Head 
 the other, and, dimly jutting out beyond Bray Head, 
 one perceives the grey shape of Wicldow Head. All day 
 long, or it seems so to me, the seaward side of the Terrace 
 houses was flooded with sunshine, although it was winter. 
 You descended by terraces and balconies to the garden, 
 and then through a tunnel, and by way of steps to the sea. 
 Each house of the terrace had its private bathing-place, 
 a tank of stone, which the sea emptied and filled with 
 the tides. There was plenty of deep water round about 
 — ^how deep I did not know, fortunately for myself when, 
 from the drawing-room windows, with green outside 
 shutters to add to the ItaUan air, I watched placidly my 
 offspring disporting themselves on the slimy rocks jutting 
 out into the deep water. It was an enchanting place 
 for children. There was a tunnel, which was supposed 
 to run right under Dalkey Hill, and there was a real 
 hermit in a cave. Also there was a seal, a friendly beast 
 who used to bob up among the bathers all along the coast. 
 
 From the end of the Terrace the road climbs steeply, 
 running along the base of Killiney HiU tiU it forks and 
 one road runs up over the hUl and the other drops down 
 to the sea's edge and the railway station. 
 
 That is a beauty which never staled, never need stale 
 during a lifetime ; but I had come back to it with fresh 
 
WHAT WE CAME BACK TO 5 
 
 eyes. Killiney Bay was never the same for long. It 
 was as blue as Reckitt's Blue, or it was a wide stretch of 
 dancing coruscations of diamond light. There were little 
 sandy bays where the sea lapped in with baby talk, 
 murmuring at your feet. There were sun-baked sandy 
 cliffs where you lay in a December sun and revelled in 
 the gentle warmth. All the cliffs were alive with larks 
 and sand-martins and chaffinches and thrushes and black- 
 birds — ^the colour of the cliffs and the hill ran the whole 
 gamut of orange and bronze, and burnished greens, 
 ' green as a drake's poll,' and all the purples. Around 
 the bay there were mountains beyond mountains in all 
 the silvers and pearls and delicate golds. At night 
 Bray, under the Head, was like a great swarm of fireflies. 
 Always in the day-time five fingers of light came from a 
 cloud and hung over sea and land, as though in blessing. 
 At night the path of the moon on the waters was a broad 
 highway of silver, quicksilver, since it was so broken and 
 dancing. 
 
 I said to some one one day, ' Will it always be as 
 beautiful ? ' I was almost afraid lest I should grow 
 staled to it, and she said, ' It is always just as beautiful 
 to me.' 
 
 We used to climb KilHney Hill to the Obelisk and the 
 Druid's Chair, and gaze over the quiet hinterland between 
 us and the mountains on one hand, and the glorious sea 
 and mountain views on the other. We were there from 
 December to May, so I suppose there must have been 
 winter days, but I cannot remember any, but always 
 the sea-birds screaming and turning in the sun, and 
 the broken gold and silver, and the soft song of the 
 sea. 
 
 As yet it was hardly known that we had returned. We 
 had not begun to make new friends. Old friends came 
 to see us — ^Robert Yelverton Tyrrell and his family very 
 often ; once or twice Lady Lyttelton, from the Royal 
 Hospital ; Lady Gilbert, and sometimes Murrough 
 O'Brien from Mount Eagle, on the side of Killiney Hill. 
 
 Murrough O'Brien was one of those delightful, high- 
 
6 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 minded Quixotic persons whom one often comes upon 
 in Ireland, at least, oftener there than anywhere else. 
 He was of the Munster O'Briens, the Dalcassians, of the 
 branch which became Earls of Inchiquin. He was 
 descended from Murrough of the Burnings, and, of 
 course, he would have had the Norman blood. It 
 showed in his aquiline features and dominant look. 
 
 He had been a I^nd Commissioner, and had ceased to 
 be one because of some Quixotism in which he took the 
 side of the people and pitched officialdom to the devil. 
 He was a Socialist, much as Auberon Herbert used to be 
 in latter Victorian England. He knew the plain people, 
 and was much loved and respected by them. Between 
 him and them there was no barrier of creed or class. He 
 was, one might almost say, impossibly high-minded and 
 fanatically honourable. He knew everybody, and his 
 visitors' list included virtually the whole very much 
 classified district. I am sure he had the ancient pride 
 of his race, but I don't think he saw any reason why there 
 should be classifications. 
 
 He was very much interested in our boys, and very 
 anxious that they should attend the National School 
 instead of going to an English public school. English 
 public schools were out of date, he said ; and the 
 National School gave a much better education. Besides, 
 think of the glorious community of man in the making at 
 the National School ! which is the equivalent of the 
 English Board School. 
 
 His sister, who was present at one of these discussions, 
 whispered to me : ' Ask him where he sent his own son.' 
 
 He looked nonplussed for a second when I asked him 
 the question. T^en he laughed. 
 
 ' My wife would have it,' he said, ' very much against 
 my will : he went to Eton.' 
 
 He had given his son the name of Eoghan, i.e. Eugene 
 or Owen. One wonders what Eton made of it. 
 
 We had not begun to pick up the threads. A. E. did 
 not come to Sorrento, nor die Sigersons that I can 
 remember, nor many of the old friends. I cannot even 
 
WHAT WE CAME BACK TO 7 
 
 recall Father Russell, though he may have come The 
 rector of the parish called, found the Catholic curate in 
 the drawing-room, and came no more. The parish 
 church — Protestant — ^was, as Father Healy put it, built 
 on a blasted rock. It was, literally. 
 
 The unrest we had foreseen in England had begun. 
 There was a coal strike that spring. People with a 
 stake in the country, even a beefsteak, had begun to 
 curse Jim Larkin. The workers had begun to bless him. 
 We heard of him as a fiery torch, running from place to 
 place, lighting the fires of discontent. He had just taken 
 up the case of the farm labourers of the County Dublin, 
 who had been very well content with the most wretched 
 conditions for themselves and their families. They had, 
 indeed, been very slow to discontent. My father, always 
 regarded as an excellent employer, whose people grew 
 old in his service, paid his men during the Eighties and 
 Nineties, I think, about an average of eleven or twelve 
 shillings a week. He gave a great deal of employment, 
 and his weekly wages bill was high, much higher than the 
 land could repay. He made nothing out of it. 
 
 Two or three of his labourers had cottages, and they 
 had very often large families. The cottage — ^unless it was 
 a new one, such as he had built for his steward — consisted 
 of a kitchen, with an inner room, divided by a partition 
 wall. The clay floor of the old cottage went into puddles 
 when it rained ; the fire on the open hearth fed by green 
 sticks smoked acridly. The parents and the children — 
 I remember a family of nine children — slept in the inner 
 rpom. There the mysteries of Birth and Death were 
 enacted, on so small and wretched a stage, with the 
 children for audience and spectators. 
 
 I don't know what they lived on. White bread and 
 tea and potatoes and American bacon, with an occasional 
 dole from the house. The children throve. . The parents 
 were attached. They lived and died in the place where 
 we were like one large family. They never thought of 
 hardship or that they might have been better treated. 
 
 It was so with skilled labour as well as unskilled. 
 
8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Wages had not been raised in Dublin for twenty and 
 thirty years, despite the advance in the cost of living. 
 The poverty of Dublin was appalling. The people 
 accepted it as though it were God's will. Strikes were 
 looked at with no favour. These little and partial ones 
 which had taken place in Dublin were regarded as English 
 Trades-Union-made, EngUsh Labour ' trying it on the 
 dog.' 
 
 Into this peaceful state of things came Larkin running 
 with the flaming torch, scattering fire and smoke as he 
 went. The ' strong ' farmers of the County DubUn 
 cursed him. I heard of him soon after my return home 
 from, my sister, a farming woman. Presently the farm 
 labourers were ' called out ' ; and the employers who 
 had been so happy with their people were aghast, 
 wounded, amazed, resentful. The farmers and "their 
 wives and daughters, who had lived in easy comfort, had 
 to turn out and fodder and bed the horses and cattle and 
 millf the cows. And they were as grieved and angry as 
 the families of the good landlords when their social order 
 came tumbling about their heads. 
 
 But the man with the flaming torch ran through the 
 city and over the countrj'side, scattering his sparks and 
 fire wherever he went, tifl it seemed as though he would 
 set the whole country ahght. Some called him a prophet, 
 some a madman, others a designing demagogue. It 
 was the beginning of the revolution. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW HOME 
 
 We had jiot got over the first keen delight of being back 
 again before we took possession of a house at Shankill, 
 Co. Dublin, and got our ponies and furniture over from 
 England. For more than a year we had been living with 
 other people's furniture, and it was a great deUght to 
 come by our own again. We found so many things we 
 had forgotten or lost, and when we began to arrange 
 things, every few seconds there was a shriek of joy, as 
 some long-lost friend was rediscovered. 
 
 I have always maintained that it is necessary to 
 move every three or four years in order to find your 
 scissors. The disappearance of pins one can under- 
 stand. They go to fill all the chinks of the world — 
 but scissors is another matter. I must have acquired 
 and lost some hundreds of scissors since I began my 
 literary career. The last time I moved I looked for- 
 ward to regaining at least six pairs. We had been 
 eighteen months in the house. I was bitterly dis- 
 appointed. I did not recover even one : and I have 
 already lost many in this house. 
 
 Clarebeg, Shankill, was a square suburban house 
 which had nothing to say for itself except that it had 
 a fine, lofty, well-proportioned room at th.e back, over- 
 looking the garden, and in the eye of the South. From 
 the bedrooms you could just see the top of the big 
 Sugarloaf, a beautiful purple cone, above the trees. 
 That big room, which we made into a library and work- 
 room, was uncommonly pleasant. The amenities were 
 really amenities. When we came first Clarebeg had 
 been vacant for many years, and the amenities were 
 
10 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 buried in prairie grass. But there were indications of 
 a garden and lawns, and there was a walk running 
 round its two acres under and between trees, carpeted 
 that spring with primroses and violets. The road, 
 overhung with trees, ran on till it made a sudden dip 
 between banks covered with coltsfoot, which gave out 
 the delicious smeU that has earned it its second name 
 of winter heliotrope, accompanied by a little stream 
 which ran under the leaves and grasses, singing the 
 louder as it came nearer the sea. 
 
 The road ended literally in the sea, and had to make 
 a tremendous plunge over a high wall to get there, for 
 coast erosion was always taking place, and the road, 
 which had once sloped to the sea's edge, had been 
 washed away and replaced by a high wall. Being 
 Ireland, no one ever thought of any protection at the 
 foot of that rapid dip, nor any warning notice. Once 
 a motor-car rushed by us in the dark, showing all its 
 lights, and the driver called back to us cheerfully, * I 'm 
 right for DubKn, amn't I ? ' ' No-o-o,' we bellowed, 
 ' you 're going into the sea ' ; and just caught him in time. 
 
 We had a deUghtful time when the amenities began to 
 reveal themselves. It was like finding dryads and 
 hamadryads in the depths of the 'forest. Two men, 
 each at the end of a spade, discovered, in some six weeks 
 of time, box-borders, hidden arbours, a sundial, a double 
 hedge with a walk between, a delightful old garden with 
 aU manner of fascinating flowers and plants and herbs. 
 We found in a corner die striped York and Lancaster 
 rose. Against the stable wall there grew the largest 
 tree verbena I have ever known. When the Japanese 
 tea-house, quite intact, not even earwiggy, suddenly 
 emerged from the double hedge, it was clothed in the 
 most glorious Dorothy Perkins rambler rose. A Uttle 
 pruning in the wild wood brought to light a delicate 
 arch, also rose-clothed, over the gate through which 
 we had had to wriggle Uke beasts in the jungle. 
 
 Before we had entered into possession of Clarebeg we 
 used to walk over most afternoons from Dalkey, and it 
 
. THE NEW HOME n 
 
 was part of the joy to see what new beauty had come to 
 light. That made the days and the weeks a delightful 
 adventure. It was April weather, and the days had the 
 ascetic beauty of the early spring, before everything 
 bursts to bloom. Then came May, and the fruit trees 
 were all out in blossom, and the garden lay revealed, 
 and the lawns were coming to light. The ' amenities ' 
 were certainly charming and very profitable. We had suc- 
 ceeded a famous gardener as tenants, and all she had done 
 seemed to have been preserved for us by the wild growth. 
 We had also had as previous tenant Major Price, that 
 mysterious bHe noire of the Sinn Feiners, but in 191 2 he 
 had not as yet emerged from commonplace officialdom. 
 We ' moved in ' with great joy. We have invariably 
 moved out and moved in as though it were a beginning 
 of the great new days. Almost at the very threshold of 
 the new days something dreadful happened. We had 
 an enchanting Pom puppy, as wise as he was gay, whom 
 we had called Dan, after Dan Russel the Fox, which we 
 were reading when he came to us. You remember the 
 poignant chapter about the poisoned hound in that 
 truly delightful book. The name and the association 
 were ominous. Dan had been strangely sleepy while we 
 were getting in. We had missed his wild frolics, but 
 ascribed the sleepiness to the disturbance of mind caused 
 in every dog by any sort of upheaval. The first or 
 second day after we got in Dan went mad with the most 
 terrible suddenness. I was in the room with him. So 
 were some of the furniture removers who very quickly dis- 
 appeared. He had been looking into the glass door of a 
 bookcase, and at the first agonised howl I thought he had 
 seen a reflection of himself and been frightened. Then 
 he rushed madly at the window, and tore at the wall. 
 I thought a wasp had stung him, although, to be sure, 
 it was too early for wasps. I opened the door and he 
 rushed madly across the passage to the pretty room which 
 1 had chosen for my ,own — ^and there, after a dreadful 
 three-quarters of an hour, during which he tore and 
 wrestled for escape from Something', howling most 
 
12 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 terribly, the sounds died away and when we went in he 
 was dead. We had sent hastily for a vet., but the dog 
 was dead before he arrived. He had died of yew poison- 
 ing. His stomach was fuU of old yew. 
 
 It was a long time before we could speak of Dan with 
 composure, and certainly his death and the dreadful 
 manner of it overshadowed our early days at Clarebeg. 
 We had the yejv-tfee which had poisoned him cut down, 
 and ever since I detest the yew, beloved of Irish ' layers- 
 out ' of gardens and pleasaunces. The ' fine Irish yew- 
 hedges,' of which their owners are so proud, have a 
 graveyard air to me. I am now, for my sins, obHged to 
 Uve among them, but I look at them with the eyes of an 
 enemy. They are evil. 
 
 Now that we were settied in a house of our own, really 
 our own, our friends began to find us out, and we began 
 to make new friends. 
 
 The garden had come to Hfe suddenly. What a kind 
 garden ! How diflFerent from the walled West-of-Ireland 
 garden of this day, cold as a stone ! The garden at 
 Clarebeg lay open to the sun and the south, with only 
 a low hedge between her and the fields. For aU that we 
 were digging her out in May, we ate our green peas and 
 new potatoes before July was over. Our friends were 
 walking between the box-borders at midsummer, under 
 the low apple-boughs prettily trained to form arches, 
 saying, ' But what a lovely garden ! ' I have said there 
 was a sundial, and though the summer of 191 2 was a 
 record for rain, the dial numbered a good many golden 
 hours. 
 
 One July day Father Matthew Russell, my friend of 
 more than thirty years, came to see us in the new house. 
 He was stiU editing his Irish Monthly, and still interested 
 in all young writers, especially young poets. But he was 
 becoming frailer and frailer. You could see the inner 
 light through the attenuation of his body. There was 
 just a thin sheet of paper between him and Heaven. 
 
 We had ordered a conveyance, but he came by an 
 earlier train, arriving with just the same cheerful brisk- 
 
THE NEW HOME 13 
 
 ness I had known in him for all those years. He was 
 greatly pleased with our new abode. He walked about, 
 seeing it all, before he came in and sat on the sofa in the 
 library, talking to the children. ' Don't be in any hurry 
 to send Pamela to school, dear,' he said to me. ' Why 
 should she go at all ? Where would she find such 
 refinement as in her own home ? ' 
 
 He was exceedingly tender with the children, blessing 
 them all, but when we talked of his coming again he 
 said, ' Oh no. This is my very last visit. I wanted to 
 see how you looked now that you had really come home.' 
 
 We walked with him to the station — ^he still refused 
 to be driven — and at the station dismissed us for our 
 afternoon walk. He had to say his Office, he said. We 
 looked across at him, going up and down the platform, 
 with the open book in his hand — a long, long look, for we 
 thought we might never see him again. We did indeed 
 see him once more, but then he was within a few hours 
 of his death— a saint's death. 
 
 I had had one great pang slipped into the joy of 
 coming home — that my father had not waited for that. 
 There were others to whom my return would have made 
 a great difference, and they had not waited. And now 
 Father Russell was slipping away, and taking a fond 
 picture of us, with our children, once more at home, with 
 him to Heaven. 
 
 The last time we were to see him, some six weeks from 
 that July visit, he called us his ' good boy ' and his ' good 
 girl '—in our mature age. We said we would see him 
 again, knowing only too well that we should not — ^in this 
 world. ' No, no, my good boy and good girl, you are not 
 to come any more. This is the very last time.' Then, 
 out of the shadows fast closing about him, he spoke of 
 some one who had hurt both him and me. ' The poor 
 fellow, he didn't mean it. You must forgive him, my 
 good child ! ' 
 
 That was the very last of many visits to him. He 
 survived his brother, the Lord Chief-Justice, by just 
 twelve years. 
 
14 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 One of these days we went to tea at the Royal Hospital, 
 where Sir Neville Lyttelton was still in residence as 
 Commander of the Forces in Ireland, and we discussed 
 literature and the volume of poems by ' Lucy Lyttelton ' 
 which was in preparation, and various people and books 
 and pictures, of whom and which we had common know- 
 ledge. Later, Lady Lyttelton accompanied us to a 
 debate at a Jlostel for girl-students of the National 
 University run by Dominican nuns. A paper was read 
 on Coventry Patmore, and we were hugely amused by 
 the young author's remarks on Patmore's theories 
 concerning love, and the remarks of the young ladies who 
 followed. My husband said afterwards to a cheerful 
 little nun, ' How much your girls know about love ! ' 
 ' Ah, sure, they don't,' she said, ' they only think they 
 do.' Some of their remarks uttered in absolute innocence 
 were certainly rather starthng. 
 
 It was my first, but not my last visit to that Hostel 
 and its Debating Society, where I read two or three 
 papers myself later on, and was received with great 
 cordiaHty. On one of these occasions — ^it must have, 
 been that first one — ^Father George O'NeiU, a Jesuit 
 professor, told me this story of Father Gerard Hopkins, 
 S.J. — whom I had met with Father Russell in the days 
 of my youth and had corresponded with, as I have told 
 in Twenty-five Tears — ^and Coventry Patmore. 
 
 Patmore had submitted to the other poet a chapter of 
 his Sponsa Dei, the prose companion volume to The 
 Vnknotvn Eros. Father Hopkins, thinking it cmly a 
 fragment, advised Patmore to burn it — ^by letter. 
 Patmore wrote back saying he had taken Father Hopkins's 
 advice and burnt the volume. It was only then that 
 Father Hopkins realised that he had counselled an auto 
 dafe of a complete book, and had been obeyed. 
 
 Before the Lytteltons left the Royal Hospital, in the 
 April of that year, 1 91 2, I met at lunch there my old 
 friend, Willie Yeats, whom I had not seen for a long time, 
 although we had kept up an intermittent correspondence. 
 When I arrived I was shown into the drawing-room 
 
THE NEW HOME 15 
 
 where the poet and Lady Gregory were arranging their 
 programme for the Abbey Theatre season. I don't 
 think either was aware of me ; I knew the poet's bad 
 sight prevented his recognising me, and presently Miss 
 Hermione Lyttelton came and took me away. I sat 
 by Willie at lunch and found him just the same ; to me 
 always the simple and gentle and generous WiHie of old. 
 But it was a jerky meal. WUlie was always rushing to 
 the telephone. Afterwards in the drawing-room, after 
 a little conversation. Lady Gregory asked that they, 
 might be excused, as though life were not long enough 
 for the affairs of the Abbey Theatre. 
 
 We did not again intrude oh the business. Lady 
 Lyttelton walked with me to the tram after I had seen the 
 lovely tulip and anemone beds of the garden and carried 
 away a great bunch. We had to wait some little while 
 for the tram, and I remember that she leant against the 
 quay wall and bade me admire the colour and lines of 
 the houses, broken by the Four Courts and an occasional 
 steeple, stretching away to the glorious" Custom House. 
 Like most great ladies she was very simple, and she 
 interviewed various ragged pensioners of hers while we 
 waited, interviews which were not without their passages 
 of humour. She talked of Lady Aberdeen and Lady 
 Wemyss, then Lady Elcho. One I knew already, but 
 was to know better and love well ; the other I was yet to 
 know and love, to my great gain. The one she cordially 
 hked and admired. Of the other she said, ' Oh, Lady 
 Elcho is an angel : of all the women I know, an angel.' 
 
 \ 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CLAREBEG AND A. E. 
 
 All that autumn and winter of 1912-1 3 the road was ' up.' 
 It was without exception the darkest road at night I have 
 ever known. When you entered it you just set your teeth 
 and went on, letting your feet feel the road for themselves. 
 There were very deep ditches to either side, and there 
 was water in them a great part of the year. It was no 
 reflection on any one to faU into these ditches on the way 
 home from a public dinner. You commended yourself 
 to Providence and your feet, shut your eyes because it 
 was darker outside than in, and went forward. It said 
 much for your feet that you so seldom fell in the ditch. 
 
 The inhabitants of ShankiU were determined not to be 
 a township — hence the absence of lights. No doubt, 
 not being a township kept the place ' select ' and old- 
 fashioned. Still there were occasions on which one 
 would have hailed the vulgarest gas-lamp as a friend. 
 It was no joke to plunge through the pitchy darkness 
 with a straying horse in front of you, as happened to us 
 one dark night — ^and you not knowing if the horse was 
 going away from you or coming towards you. I have 
 known the flashes of lightning in a violent thunderstorm 
 to be welcomed in a midnight passage down that road. 
 
 But in that first winter the road being ' up ' had an 
 illumination. It consisted of a few smofy oil lamps to 
 show where the deep trench began that left the merest slit 
 of solid road. I forgot to mention that if you held on to 
 the right-hand path from the top of the road, or thought 
 you held on to it, you feU into the ditch, for the path 
 was merely an ' amenity ' of a rich man's dwelling, and 
 ended properly at his gate, 
 le 
 
CLAREBEG AND A. E. j; 
 
 The illuminant was there, and also the watchman over 
 the life and safety of those who used the road while it was 
 up ; but the watchman was a deaf mute. The smoky 
 oil-lamps gave very little indication of the trench, and 
 were set at very long intervals. The ' dummy's ' warning 
 took the form of a hobble-gobble which frightened more 
 people into the trench than it ever kept out. It was a 
 terrifying thing to knock up against the ' dummy ' in the 
 dead waste and middle of the night. The flash of his 
 own lantern on the flat, pale, unsleeping face was enough 
 to make you prefer the trench to the road. He was a 
 good poor fellow, and his solicitude for your safety was 
 great. Once he followed one of us, step by step, down 
 the road, not even hobble-gobbling, at one o'clock in 
 the morning. That one said he had known fear for the 
 first time. 
 
 When you were in your house and comfortable, lying 
 awake at night, there was an eerie sense of companionship 
 in that dumb watchfulness outside your gates. We felt 
 that sense of companionship much more a couple of 
 years later, when again there were watchmen in the road, 
 and a watch-fire, because of the railway line being moved 
 inland from the ever-encroaching sea. But that second 
 time there was something much more tangible to fear 
 than the ghostly cart that creaked by a:bout midnight — 
 oddly enough, we never met it in the road — ^and returned 
 about three o'clock. The ghosts of smugglers dead a 
 century ago, people said ; but other people would have 
 it that it was merely lawless persons carting away the 
 sand from the sea-shore, which was an offence according 
 to law. The second time the terror that flieth by night 
 was the terror, to a few women in a manless house, of a 
 boat that might put fn any night at all, and the stealthy 
 movements of men coming up the lonely road. Then 
 it was good to look out at the watch-fire. But aU that 
 was yet two years ahead. 
 
 Once I asked a Shankill lady who was very much 
 interested in the affairs of the place why a deaf mute 
 was appointed as watchman. She said his mother was 
 
i8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 such a good woman and his family most respectable, and 
 besides, he had lost a leg, which had been replaced by 
 a very fine wooden one, paid for by subscription. The 
 respectabjUty was certainly there. The ' dummy's ' 
 brother entered our service later as gardener and general 
 man. He was very efficient and thoroughly respectable. 
 He was very proud of being a Protestant, and corre- 
 spondingly looftfed down on his Papistical neighbours. 
 When he attended the Sunday Parliament on the railway 
 bridge, very smart, with a flower in his coat and a hat 
 of Imitation Panama, he was reduced to silence, since he 
 would only converse with another Protestant, and there 
 was none but the ' dummy.' So, while the Papists settled 
 the affairs of the nation, the ' dummy ' and his brother 
 stood side by side, or recHned, in a superior isolation. 
 
 That wet autumn we had some interesting visitors. 
 A. E. came again to my hearth after many years. We 
 had tried to induce him to visit us in London in vain. 
 ' What can any one want to live in London for ? ' he 
 had asked in amazement. 
 
 Many things had happened since we had last met, and 
 I had to grow accustomed to the big gentle man, with 
 the mUd, wise, contemplative eyes and silky beard, who 
 had taken the place of the slim boy I used to know. I 
 walked down to the sea and back with him, feeling dread- 
 fully shy. I suppose I made him shy too, for he was 
 by no means the intemperate talker I know him to be 
 now, that day. I searched in my mind for things to say — 
 an odd thing to remember, now that I can never hear 
 enough from him or talk enough to him. He, alone, 
 was well worth coming back for. 
 
 But stay — surely he came earlier than the autumn. 
 There was a wet summer evening when he and Sir Horace 
 Plunkett dined with us, and our magnificently efficient 
 manservant was in the condition when he was not efficient, 
 and forgot to light lamps, leaving us in the summer dusk 
 without even the consolation of the fire. Sir Horace 
 was not well, and was preoccupied with the necessity 
 of meeting H. G. WeUs and Mrs. Wells at the mail-boat ; 
 
CLAREBEG AND A. E. \g 
 
 and dinner was unconscionably late, and the. manservant 
 kept one on the jump as to what he would or would not 
 do next. It was perhaps no wonder A. E. was silent. 
 We all felt depressed. It was impossible to cheer Sir 
 Horace ; even my best story fell on deaf ears, usually very 
 receptive to a jest. There was Joseph Campbell', 
 ' the Mountainy Singer,' too. After Sir Horace left 
 there was a good deal of talk, but I do not remember 
 much about it. It had been an anxious evening for a 
 hostess who was not usually troubled about domestic 
 contretemps. And again A. E. was at lunch one day 
 with Sir Horace when we were there, and I can remember 
 his mild beam at me across the table against the back- 
 ground of his own beautiful paintings — ^to my purblind 
 eyes a soft blur of aU the lilacs and violets melting into 
 dove-colour and silver, — ^which hang round the dining- 
 room at Kilteragh. 
 
 Why then should I think that he came first one day 
 in autumn ? It must have been a day in summer when 
 he came with Mrs. Russell and his two boys. But there 
 was an autumn day when we sat in the library at Clarebeg, 
 and he talked wisdom and beauty as he always does. 
 
 After he went away I jotted down some of his talk. 
 I wish I had done that oftener, for I have known many 
 
 freat talkers, but I have never had time to keep a diary 
 eyond a mere record of vvork done and letters written, 
 although a good diary might be one's passport to 
 immortality — a. hundred years hence, perhaps. 
 Here are some of the things he told me : — 
 Michael Davitt described for him once the lurid sermons 
 he had heard about Hell in the CathoHc churches of the 
 West of Ireland — ^as the priest piled on the horrors, the 
 people groaning and beating their breasts and tossing 
 like trees in a storm. The climax was reached in the 
 case of one sermon when the preacher paused before 
 saying, with terrible impressiveness, ' The Devil is the 
 Landlord of Hell.' 
 
 Before the Land League a woman in the County Mayo 
 — the County of the Land League — ^heard the crying of a 
 
^6 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 child out on the bog. Going to look for it she found 
 a naked babe, and carried it into her cabin. She put 
 it in her own child's cradle to warm it while she set 
 milk in a saucepan on the fire to feed it. But the milk, 
 as it boiled, turned blue. She threw that away and set 
 on more milk, but when that second boUing came the 
 milk had turned black. A third time she set on milk and 
 the colour of il was red as blood. Then the naked 
 child sat up in the cradle and spoke. And the thing he 
 said was that there were three years coming : during the 
 first year the rain would fall without ceasing ; during 
 the second the famine would be on the people and 
 there would be many deaths ; in the third much blood 
 would flow. While she looked the naked babe was gone, 
 and there was in the cradle only a withered leaf that had 
 been blown in through the door. 
 
 The prophesying babe by the way is not uncommon in 
 Ireland. It is usually supposed to be a fairy. Some- 
 time during 191 5 — ^in April, I find from my notebook — 
 I was told the following tale by a young Mayo solicitor. 
 
 ' A woman at Knock was washing up the cups and 
 saucers and she let fall a cup. A voice behind her said 
 " If you go on like that you '11 break aU the delf." She 
 looked round and there was no one but her two-months- 
 old child in the cradle. She turned back again and a 
 voice again said " Be more careful or you 'U break the 
 delf." And there was the child, sitting up in the cradle, 
 looking at her. She ran to the field for her husband,' 
 and the man thought she was mad when he heard her 
 tale, but when he came in he saw the child sitting up in 
 the cradle looking at him like an old man. " Did you 
 speak ? " he said to the child. And the child answered : 
 " Yes, I told her she 'd break the delf if she didn't take 
 care." Some one ran for the priest, and when he came 
 the child spoke again. The priest, knowing the child 
 was a witch, asked it : " Can you teU anything of the 
 future ? " "I can tell you one thing," said the child, 
 " the Kaiser will be in London by August." ' 
 
 That would be clearly a case of possession, such as I 
 
CLAREBEG AND A. E. 21 
 
 have a record of somewhere which tells how two little 
 girls of an African tribe, having been rescued and brought 
 up by nuns as Christians, became possessed by something 
 which spoke the finest Horatian Latin and argued theology 
 with the Bishop, hastily summoned by the good nuns. 
 The inhabitant of the Knock baby's tiny tenement was 
 fortunately not very accurate in his prophecy, but that is 
 neither here nor there, as John O'Leary used to say. 
 
 While I am writing this I come on another tale of the 
 kind in the Irish Daily Independent of March 20, 191 8. 
 
 ' A strange report comes from a village near Loughrea, 
 that a baby within an hour of its birth spoke in a loud 
 voice, and what it said was that there would be dreadful 
 battles, but the war would end in April without a decisive 
 result. Having spoken, the child died.' 
 
 But now to return to our A. E. and his tales. 
 
 ' A farmer in Mayo once told me that his sheep did 
 not do well on the mountain, because they had been 
 "in the way " of the fairies. When they were moved 
 
 they began to thrive. Near by that, at A , they set 
 
 out to build a post-ofHce, but fortunately the postmaster 
 discovered, in time, that it was " in the way," and had 
 it moved twelve feet. You ca;n see the walls where they 
 were begun and left, if you go there. Round about 
 Nephin ' (i.e. the big mountain, Croagh Patrick's rival 
 for size and majesty) ' the people see visions of people 
 coming and going.' 
 
 ' At they will not keen their dead. They will 
 
 go away to a distance before they cry and lament, lest 
 the hounds of Satan should hear them, for the Soul must 
 have three days' start of the hounds, lest they overtake 
 and rend it on the way to Heaven.' 
 
 One of those days A. E. said to me : ' Here is a story 
 you may make your own of and do what you like with. 
 
 ' There was once a man who had written a very 
 beautiful story about St. George. He would have gone 
 on writing more beautiful stories about saints ; but, 
 unfortunately, some critic discovered that he had a 
 genius for the macabre. So he wrote horrible stories 
 
22 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 and forgot all about the saints. He died, and his corpse 
 lay on die bed, for the dead do not know for some time 
 that they are dead. And as he lay there, so helpless, 
 he heard, pitter-patter, feet coming along the corridor, 
 feet he hiew. They were the feet of one of the devils 
 he had created in his stoi:ies,the Crimson Dwarf. Pitter- 
 patter came other feet — ^the Eye-in-the-Forehead. They 
 were all coming, all the evil creatures of his imagination. 
 Then the Soul hurled itself away from the opening door, 
 and sped through the window and out into the wilder- 
 ness, the feet following, pitter-patter, little dry, horny 
 feet. And while he paused for breath he heard them 
 ever gaining on him, for he had created them, and now 
 they were tracking him down. He was all but lost when 
 there suddenly appeared before him the figure of St. 
 George, calm and beautiful, in his knight's armour. 
 The Saint held out his hand to the poor cowering Soul, 
 for an image of him too the man had made before he 
 went astray after devils. St. George struck at the 
 demons, and drove them howling into the wilderness. 
 But the poor frightened Soul he led into Heaven.' 
 Another day A. E. told me this strange story : — 
 ' Many years ago I was sitting in my room in a house 
 in Grantham Street, when, suddenly, the walls opened 
 before me and I saw a great mountain of a very peculiar 
 shape. At the time I did not know what mountain it 
 could be, but I knew it later as Ben Bulben in Sligo, 
 which you remember in the story of Dermod and Grania. 
 I sat in a valley below the mountain, and as I gazed 
 about me there appeared the figure of a young man. 
 His countenance was most remarkable. He had brown 
 eyes and hair, and his face was of the Napoleonic type, 
 with broad straight brows, and his expression was deter- 
 mined and persistent. Then he vanished, and there 
 appeared the figure of a woman with a blue cloak over 
 her head, and she carrying a child in her arms, and rays 
 seemed to come from all parts of Ireland, and they rested 
 on the child's head so that he was in the midst of a halo 
 of light. This vision, in its turn, vanished, and there 
 
CLAREBEG AND A. E. 23 
 
 came a picture of what appeared to be a queen upon her 
 throne, and while I looked the throne fell and she with 
 it. That too vanished, and I saw a man of gigantic 
 stature striding up and down Ireland beating a drum, 
 and as he walked smoke and flames sprang up in his 
 path. Then he too vanished, and I saw nothing but 
 rays coming from every part of Ireland, so that I could 
 not tell whence they came or where they ended. And 
 while I looked the walls closed and I was sitting in my 
 room alone.' 
 
 Here is another story : ' There was a churchyard in 
 the north of Ireland much frequented by fairies, and the 
 people were always coming to see the fairies, tiU it 
 became a nuisance to the rector. One day I happened 
 to go into the church. I sat down and I had a vision. 
 I saw a long procession entering the church, and, leading 
 it, was a very proud bishop, with his head held very 
 high, as though aU the world was beneath him. Behind 
 him walked a boy, carrying a lighted candle, and the 
 insolence of his expression was beyond all description. 
 I made a sketch of these two afterward from memory 
 and gave it to the rector, and he stuck it up on the notice 
 board in the churchyard, and after that neither fairies 
 nor curious people came there again.' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 YOUNG POETS 
 
 I ONLY realised when I came back to Ireland how much 
 the young poets and artists contemporary with me had 
 missed those Sundays at Whitehall. At Clarebeg we 
 began to make a new circle, with a difference, for we were 
 no longer young. There came Padraic Colum and his 
 young wife often, and James Stephens and Mrs. Stephens, 
 and Joseph and Nancy Campbell, both poets, and Seumas 
 O'SuUivan now and again, always with his dreamy 
 elusive look, as though he might slip away if you but took 
 your eyes from him. 
 
 I remember now that it was under the apple-trees of 
 the Clarebeg garden that A. E. told us about Stephens, 
 of whom we had already heard reports in London. A 
 little later, at A. E.'s picture-show, which used to be a 
 feature of the Dublin autumns before the war, we met 
 him ; and from that time tiU May of the following year 
 when they went to Paris, we saw a great deal of the 
 Stephenses. He was a mostj fascinating person, a very 
 simple, humble, gentle genius, though perfectly ready 
 to roar down an opponent in a discussion. In fact, he 
 was an intemperate talker to match A. E., but it was only 
 in the arguments men love that he was ready to roar 
 you down ; with a woman he was extremely gentle. 
 
 In the talking Philosopher of the Crock of Gold he 
 pokes sly, loving fun at dear A. E., who once said to me 
 regretfully, ' There were three great talkers in Dublin 
 where there are many talkers : Stephens, Stephen 
 M'Kenna, and myself. And now, with Stephens in Paris 
 and Stephen M'Kenna somewhere else, only I am left.' 
 
YOUNG POETS 25 
 
 Our first Christmas at Glarebeg, the Stephenses dined 
 with us. They, unfortunately, on the way from the 
 station, took that delusive right-hand path which led 
 them into the ditch, from which they scrambled out only 
 to be flurried into the trench by the ' dummy's ' 
 hobble-gobble. When they arrived they were woeful 
 spectacles, but very hilarious about their misfortunes. 
 They had to be changed, and whatever garments they 
 retained scraped, before we sat down to dinner. But 
 the meal was a very merry one, Stephens delighting 
 the children with his antics when he donned the caps, 
 aprons, etc., from the crackers. 
 
 We used to read a good deal of poetry in an indeliberate 
 fashion those evenings, while Mrs. Stephens and the 
 children chattered. He was as much interested as 
 WiUie Yeats used to be in poetry, and had the same 
 generosity. Even the verses of the child of twelve 
 interested him. He would have loved ' The Mach 
 Explosion,' written by Patrick at the age of seven, but 
 unfortunately the precious MS. book containing that 
 and other treasures had disappeared in one of our many 
 movings. Fortunately I was able to preserve the gem 
 which we used to say fitted Patrick, then Bunny, to 
 succeed A4r. W. Le Queux as a luridly sensational 
 novelist. He had made first a prose version of the tale : 
 
 'The Mach Explosion 
 
 ' Once a lady went to Hte a candle. First she got a 
 mach. As she took the box, as she struck the mach it 
 lit in her hand. What was she to do now that hapened 
 the box and all but the poor lady was bernt to Deth 
 and her husband was not looking but he was liting up 
 the fire, so he happened lightly not to see, but wen she 
 was half bernt her husband lookt round and wen he 
 saw she was berning he did not like it a tall and it made 
 him very angry. As he was so angry he put too much 
 coal on and then he set the Chimbley a lite and then he 
 set the hole place on fire and he hiniself was bernt, 
 
26 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Then there was no one in that house a tall. That 's 
 what comes of lousing your temper.' 
 
 TTiis dramatic episode he thought worthy of being 
 rendered into verse, and here it is. 
 
 THE MACH EXPLOSION 
 
 There'was once a lady lighting a candle. 
 
 As she struck the mach 
 It went too near her sleave 
 
 And it began to catch. 
 
 As she was on fire 
 
 She tryed to put it out. 
 It frytened her very much, - 
 
 The mach went fizzing about. 
 
 The fire went on 
 
 And got worse and worse. 
 She never found the fire had gone 
 
 Till she began to curse. 
 
 Wen she was nearly bernt. 
 
 Her husband came and saw 
 Her in that dreadful state. 
 
 The first word he said was No more. 
 
 Wen she was gone 
 
 He went downstairs 
 And put some coal on the fire. 
 
 In his anger he lit a chair. 
 
 And also he put too much on ' 
 
 And set the chimbley a hte. 
 Which made him more angry. 
 
 He tryed with all his might 
 
 But alas, he could not. 
 
 It set everything on fire. 
 Her husband's coat was caught, 
 
 And slowly he said : This I do not admire. 
 
YOUNG POETS 27 
 
 It went on 
 
 Till the man was bernt. 
 The last word he said was Good-bye, 
 
 And also, O my ! 
 
 And all was bernt, 
 
 The house was gone. 
 When the house was burning 
 
 The fire brightly shone. 
 
 Without them it was sad, 
 
 It looked funny to see the house gone, 
 It made everybody feel mad, 
 
 That man's daughter and son. 
 
 Everyone was sad. 
 
 All the children cryed. 
 Without that poor man and woman 
 
 All the grown-ups sighed. 
 
 But, never mind. 
 
 To Heaven will go their souls. 
 To them God will be kind, 
 
 Just like little moles. 
 
 And He will bless there heart 
 
 And keep them safe from danger, 
 They will not sleep in a cart 
 
 Or on a bed. 
 
 But no want of sleep 
 
 In such a beautiful place. 
 Where we all shall meet 
 
 In that nice Heaven. 
 
 God no's were they are. 
 
 And has kept them safe. 
 He gives them rides on a cat. 
 
 They will always love Him. 
 
 We will all meet together 
 
 As Ute as a feather, 
 All over the ground is hether 
 
 In God's. own land. 
 
28 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 I apologise for this excursion into the past, remember- 
 ing that the verses have given pleasure to many. 
 Stephens would have capered if he had heard them, and 
 though he often capered I don't think he had that special 
 occasion. 
 
 I remember him hanging enchanted over the Oxford 
 Book of Poetry, saying that 
 
 ' As ye came from the Holy Land 
 Of Walsingham ' 
 
 vs'as the finest of all poems. 
 
 A very clever woman said to me at that time that 
 Padraic Colum was Uke a child going into a wood, 
 with very wide eyes expecting to see something, while 
 Stephens was like something skipping out of a wood 
 ready to pop down on a toadstool and talk to you. 
 
 He was — ^is happily — extraordinarily bright and alert. 
 I remember him skipping with joy over the flight of a 
 white golf baU against the background of vivid green in 
 April. ' Isn't it like a white bird ? ' he said. 
 
 Well, well, all the good talk is as yet too new to be 
 ' prented,' too new and too personal. He did go to 
 Paris in the May of 191 3, and only came back at the 
 beginning of the war. His friends had been opposed to 
 his going, holding that it was the wrong atmosphere for 
 his genius. It has not spoilt him. He remained 
 obdurately miserable while he was there. A friend 
 said of one of his letters, ' It was just like a dog 
 lifting his head and howling with wretchedness.' He 
 never took to the Parisian life, and now, happily, he 
 is back in the Irish life which is his natural and proper 
 environment. 
 
 A. E. said to me of Stephens's treatment of the 
 characters in his stories : ' He is like a puppy playing 
 with puppies. He rolls over and over with them, 
 shakifig and worrying, with such wild pleasure as to be 
 of immense value to a devitalised world.' 
 
 The Demi-Gods I have not read, though it stands on 
 
YOUNG POETS 49 
 
 my bookshelves. Stephens's pitfall would appear to be 
 a tendency to irreverence and mockery. So Paris was 
 the worst of all possible places for him. There was 
 rough, tender reverence in the early poemS that shocked 
 the orthodox respectability, and, I think, real faith and 
 religion. The Quarter might easily make him a mocker, 
 and in the Demi-Gods there are indications of Paris, I 
 am told. His prose may treat heavenly beings as a 
 puppy plays with puppies ; but his poetry never. 
 Whether he will of will not, it is haunted with the thought 
 of God. 
 
 At that picture-show of A. E.'s, besides renewing an 
 old friendship with Mr. Justice and Mrs. Ross, which has 
 continued most happily, I added a new acquaintance — 
 rather two new acquaintances — ^in Lord Dunsany, and 
 Francis Ledwidge who was going round the pictures 
 very much under the wing of Lord Dunsany. I talked 
 to Francis Ledwidge ; a very pretty woman was saying 
 something to Lord Dunsany about how good it was for 
 people to receive the pagan idea, for all the world as 
 though one were at a picture-show in London, in those 
 days of cliches, the Eighteen-Nineties. Francis Ledwidge 
 was wrapped up in a huge frieze coat. It gave one the 
 impression somehow of covering a multitude of sins. 
 His face, as I remember it, had no likeness to the nimimy- 
 piminy Bunthorne picture of him which appeared in 
 some papers after his death, nor to the private soldier 
 one I have seen in a Christmas number of the Bookman. 
 I carried away an impression of a newly washed, red-and- 
 white wholesomeness. One felt he ought to have been 
 very fair if the sun had not ruddied and goldened him. 
 He was so eager,- so humble, so reverent to an older 
 writer, that I have always thought of him since as some- 
 thing very winsome. While we talked A. E. stood by 
 and beamed on us through his glasses. 
 
 A. E.'s pictures took the colour out of other people's. 
 One came in from the muddied Dublin streets to the 
 wonderful skies and sands and mountains and rivers of 
 Western and North- Western Ireland. If any one else 
 
30 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 but A. E. painted those colours people who did not know 
 would say they were impossible. The deep indigo blue 
 of winter skies in the West of Ireland, the pink of sands 
 under evening skies, might be incredible if you did not 
 know them. Light streams from his pictures, so that 
 they kUl out any picture hung near them. In a room 
 where they are your eyes turn first to them. You are 
 always conscious of them. 
 
 A. E. sells his pictures for a song — an old song : he 
 would like the phrase. He is quite capable of selling a 
 picture literally for an old or a new song. He told me 
 he priced his pictures so that they might not be beyond 
 the reach of a poor man, a clerk or the like, who was 
 minded for an extravagance. 
 
 Once he was pleased when I told him that I had made 
 a discovery ; that turf-smoke, rising over a distant 
 village, was exactly verdigris colour. I had been staying 
 in Tyrone with Mr. Justice and Mrs. Ross, and the latter 
 had insisted on my carrying and using a very strong pair 
 of glasses when we made excursions. By their aid I dis- 
 covered many things ; for instance, that the bogs were not 
 only the colour of autumn bracken, as my bUnd eyes had 
 supposed, and that discovery of turf-smoke over a distant 
 village as verdigris colour. A. E. said delightedly : 
 ' You are quite right : it is exactly the colour ; but no 
 one would dare to paint it so.' He would. 
 
 W. B. Yeats was out of DubUn by that time, but one 
 or another recalled stories of him. This one had seen 
 him call up the spirits by names as magnificent as those 
 which run gloriously in Lord Dunsany's fantasies. As 
 he went round and round, waving his hands in incantation, 
 he stopped now and again to eat a plum from a dish 
 which stood on a sideboard in the room. 
 
 Another recalled how the spell was broken at a seance 
 by the sound of a tea-bell. I can answer for it that the 
 poet was a particular lover of his tea. He had just been 
 inculcating on the circle that the spirits required to be 
 treated with a fine courtesy. At the sound of the bell 
 he raised his hand to his forehead and pushed back a 
 
YOUNG POETS 3t 
 
 lock of hair, in a familiar gesture, left the spirits un- 
 ceremoniously and fled to his tea. 
 
 Another had a tale of him and an eccentric young 
 Dublin poet who wrote one small volume of exquisite 
 poetry and a book of prose which was banned by the 
 libraries. The young poet turned up at W. B.'s 
 lodgings. 
 
 * I came to see you,' he explained, ' because we are 
 interested in the same subjects. I would like to explain 
 to you my theories on the subject of poetry.' 
 
 They talked a while, and he controverted and contra- 
 dicted all W. B. said. Finally, he took his hat sadly, and 
 said ' I see I had better go. You are, alas, too old for 
 me to make any impression upon you.' 
 
 And he went. 
 
 One or two events of those days were in the nature of 
 sequels or continuations. In Twenty-Five Tears I had 
 given some of my correspondence with Lord Lytton 
 (Owen Meredith). Now his son, who shares his gifts 
 and graces, wrote to me, sending me a photograph of his 
 father and renewing that invitation to Knebworth, given 
 nearly thirty years earlier, and made impossible of 
 acceptance by the giver's appointment to the Viceroyalty 
 of India. Now, after all those years, the invitation was 
 renewed by his son. 
 
 ' I am sending you the Watts portrait which I have 
 inscribed. I hope you will keep it as a reminder that 
 you have promised to visit us at Knebworth. Unfor- 
 tunately, I cannot have the pleasure of meeting you there 
 for a year, as my house is let till next autumn, but I 
 rely on you to write and propose yourself at any time 
 convenient to yourself after September. If you come 
 to England before then I hope that we may meet in 
 London.' 
 
 A. E. had told me some time before about Lord and 
 Lady Lytton whom he had met in the golden days of the 
 Dudley Viceroyalty, when poets and artists were highly 
 esteemed guests at the Viceregal and Chief Secretary's 
 Lodges. He had a great admiration for both. He said 
 
32 THE YEARS OE THE SHADOW 
 
 of Lady Lytton that she was more like a flower than any 
 woman he had ever seen. 
 
 Here is another odd continuation from Twenty-Five 
 Tears to The Tears of the Shadow. In the former volume 
 I had written of a famous party at the house of (the then) 
 Sir Charles Russell, 86 Harley Street, in May 1889. 
 There met Gladstone, Lord Randolph Churchill, and 
 Mr. Pamell, with all the London notabilities. It was 
 a Feast- of Rehabilitation, coming immediately after the 
 exposure of Pigott's forgery in the Times. I had written : 
 
 ' My principal memory is of Mr. ParneU. I would not 
 have approached him, seeing how he was thronged 
 about— he was the man of the hour and the occasion — 
 only Wilfrid Meynell led me up to him. His eye fell 
 upon me, and I am quite sure his face brightened. Was 
 it because I was an obscure little Irish follower of his 
 in the great London crowd ? Was it wath some pre- 
 monition of the passionate loyalty that would have died 
 for him in a day yet to be ? He had been listening to all 
 the sweet adulatory things that were being said to him 
 with a fine, chUly courtesy. His face brightened — ^I am 
 sure of it — ^as his gaze found me out hesitating. He took 
 my hand and held it, in a clasp which was not cold. 
 
 ' " Oh, Mr. Pamell, you don't remember me," I said. 
 " You 've seen me in Ireland, but, of course . . ." 
 
 ' " I remember you perfectly," he said. " I have been 
 reading your poems." 
 
 ' Now this overwhelmed me, for we had always believed 
 that Mr. ParneU's reading was of the most practical. 
 
 ' Others besides myself noticed and commented on the 
 warmth of Mr. ParneU's reception of me, and I was 
 congratulated on every hand. I don't think he had cared 
 very much about his rehabilitation. Perhaps I brought 
 him the mountains and the fields of home.' 
 
 Well, here is the other side of the story. Some time 
 in the summer of the fatal year 1914 there came to me 
 the two volumes of Mrs. ParneU's book about her 
 husband inscribed : ' To Katharine Tynan, with Com- 
 pUments, from Katharine ParneU.' 
 
YOUNG POETS 33 
 
 At page 139 of vol. i. occur these passages about the 
 Feast of Rehabilitation : — 
 
 * The reception was a time of adulation for liim from 
 first to last, I afterwards heard, but when he came home 
 and told me about it he remarked : " It was all very 
 kind, and just as troublesome as usual — or would have 
 been if I had not discovered a brown head with friendly 
 eyes that looked as shy as I felt." 
 
 ' I said, " Dear me, who was this charming lady ? 
 T should like to know." 
 
 ' " That is just what she was : a charming Uttle lady, 
 an Irishwoman. It was Katharine Tynan. You read 
 some of her things to me " ; and he went on to speak of 
 others he had met at the rieception, afterwards reverting 
 to the pleasure he had felt in meeting Katharine Tynan, 
 who, he believed, genuinely felt what " all those others " 
 were saying. 
 
 ' Presumably " those others " were perfectly sincere 
 in their appreciation ; but Parnell, so English in his own 
 nature, had a constitutional distrust of English people, 
 and, curiously enough, did not understand them well, 
 while the Irish character was an open book to him. 
 At a reception like this where the guests were, of course, 
 mostly English, Parnell would retire behind his coldest, 
 most aloof bulwark of exquisite courtesy, and to use 
 his own simile about Katharine Tynan, " I felt as though 
 a Httle friendly bird had made a song for me in an 
 unfriendly land." We often afterwards spoke of " the 
 little friendly bird," and should Mrs. Hinkson (Katharine 
 Tynan) ever see this book she wiU know that " the Chief " 
 appreciated both her loyalty and her song.' 
 
 Well, if Mrs. Parnell ever sees this, as I hope she will, 
 let me tell her how grateful I was for that message from 
 ' the Chief,' towards whom my loyalty and devotion are as 
 strong now as they were in the great days of ' the Parnell 
 Split,' that discoverer of loyalties. WTiy now, in 191 8, 
 one hears on every side In Ireland : ' If we only had 
 Parnell now ! ' And the aspiration is as fervent from 
 the lips of those who were against him and the children 
 
 c 
 
34 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 of those who were against him, as from those who gave 
 him passionate fealty, and their children. Time has 
 brought him back to be the incomparable Leader to aU 
 sections of Irish Nationahsts. 
 
 Here is a bit of a letter which is also in a sense a 
 continuation from Twenty-Five Tears. It is from 
 J. L. Garvin, whom I first met on that shivering Sunday 
 morning of October 1891, when there was death in the 
 air of Dublin, anti, after an exhausting night of banshee 
 wind and rain, Ireland lay cold in a stupefaction — ^the 
 morning of ParneU's funeral. I had written in Twenty- 
 Five Years that I beUeved Garvin's great enthusiasm 
 was for Parnell, no matter what came later. I am sure 
 he will forgive my quoting him. 
 
 ' What you say moves old chords, but don't forget 
 that the first thing I ever wrote— Heaven forgive me !— 
 was a poem on the death of Gordon ; and I only joined 
 Cowen of Newcastle during the Parnell crisis because I 
 was an advanced ImperiaUst and anti-Gladstonian, as 
 well as an Independent Home Ruler. I stiU think and 
 always say that ParneU was one of the very greatest of 
 men, and abate not a jot in that respect. But my Irish 
 friends forget that I never saw Ireland till I was over 
 twenty ; that I have never spent three months of my 
 life there, and that only one side of my circle touched, 
 it seems, one side of theirs. What a?peck of trouble has 
 been caused me by that early intercourse of mine with 
 people most of whom heartily accepted every word of 
 mine with which they agreed, and never heard a syllable 
 of my other doctrines, though I preached them hard J 
 However, I don't regret a bit of it, but remember you 
 always not only with constant kindness]but with^warm 
 friendship. 
 
 ' It amuses me. to think of the great idea that came to 
 me in Dublin, when I discovered it more than twenty 
 years ago. I thought that no one there had a proper 
 respect for facts, and that everybody simply hated an 
 adverse fact ; and I thought and said there was yet 
 no Ireland. And, you remember, I wanted to start an 
 
YOUNG POETS 35 
 
 Irish Spectator, which should have opposite articles on 
 vthe same subjects and under the same titles, carried 
 through parallel columns by the ablest Nationalists and 
 Unionists I could get, to the end of the political matter. 
 Then we were to come to literature, art, music, science, 
 and so for the first time to produce something which 
 every one in Ireland could read and would have to read. 
 When you remember the foresight of that, and how 
 entirely in the spirit of Thomas Davis, as developed and 
 applied to mental and moral problems, don't you think 
 at odd moments that my subsequent politics have been 
 more intelligible than my old friends on that side have 
 ever been willing to admit f ' 
 
 Mr. Garvin hits off the Irish way to a nicety. I am 
 just like that myself ; therefore he is dear to me, a man 
 and a brother, as a true blue ParneU man. I am simply 
 deaf and blind to any other aspect of him. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 , GOOD STORIES 
 
 In the Dublin of our youth it was the most famiHar 
 spectacle to see men button-holing each other in the 
 street and laughing in a way which would amaze the 
 sober-minded EngHshman, if it did not scandalise him. 
 In those days a deal of business in Dublin was apparently 
 conducted by story-telling. The Library of the Four 
 Courts was reported to be the best story-telling centre 
 in DubHn, and that is to say in the world, as a certain 
 famous poUtical club was reported to start all the 
 scandals. 
 
 When we came back the abandon of the old days was 
 not so obvious in pubhc, but in private the story-telling 
 went on just the same. Every one who came to see us 
 told us stories ; and in these Years of the Shadow, which 
 wiU lie on us for many a year to come, laughter is 
 precious, so I shall devote a chapter to story-tellirig. 
 
 By the way, here is one I heard of Dr. Mahaffy, who 
 in one way or another is often in the good stories. He 
 came back from a first meeting with a newly-crowned 
 head in a discontented mood. ' What do you think of 
 
 the King of ? ' ' Well, I will tell you. I said to 
 
 him, " Would your Majesty like to hear an Irish story ? " 
 and he replied, " That depends. Dr. Mahaffy ! " ' 
 
 Well, I hope I shaU be able to justify my Irish stories. 
 
 Some of them were told by B in the Valuation 
 
 Ofiice, who spent years in travelling up and down the 
 wildest parts of Ireland. He told me once of the soU- 
 tudes : this is not a story, by the way : — 
 
 ' Often in the old days when I travelled by outside 
 car we 'd cUmb up a long hill, and when we began to 
 
GOOD STORIES 37 
 
 descend the other side there 'd be a valley before us, and 
 that ending in another climb over the next hill into 
 another valley, add so on. Well, sometimes as we 
 descended the hill I 'd see a little cabin far down in the 
 valley, and a few acres of land about it : and, as soon as 
 we appeared at the top of the hiU, a man would come 
 out of the cabin and stand watching us as we came. 
 He 'd watch us while we passed, and when I looked back 
 as we cHmbed the hiU out of that valley he 'd be still 
 standing there, watching us. I knew when we 'd dis- 
 appeared he 'd go back into the cabin and he 'd think 
 all that evening and the next day of the man who passed 
 by on the car, who he could be, and what his business : 
 where he came from and where he was going to, and 
 whether he 'd been there before and whether he 'd come 
 again.' 
 
 In those days all official and other travelUng in the 
 parts of Ireland untapped by the railways was done on 
 an outside car. I 've done it myself — ^forty miles on 
 an outside car between Gweedore and Letterkenny, and 
 I propose that those who did it habitually were giants. 
 
 B told us that seeing his carman, when tremendous 
 
 western rain was travelling up from the Atlantic, take 
 off his coat, fold it and put it under him, he asked him 
 why he did that. ' Well, you see, your Honour, if I was 
 to wear it I 'd have a wet coat when the shower was 
 •over : but by savin' it I '11 have a dry coat to put on 
 me when the rain 's gone by.' 
 
 The outside car was the worst possible conveyance for 
 the Irish winter. It was impossible to protect yourself 
 from the tremendous rains, and you sat in a pool of 
 
 water on the cushions. One of B ^'s carmen 
 
 provided a gridiron so that his fare might sit out of 
 the wet. 
 
 One day driving, they came on a group of gipsies by 
 the roadside. 
 
 ' They are something new,' said B , ' a wild- 
 looking lot.' 
 
 * Oh, begob,' said the carman, ' your Honour 's right. 
 
38 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 That 's the quare assortmint, as the divil said of the Tin 
 Commandments.' 
 
 B stopped at a country hotel for a meal. 
 
 ' What would your Honour like ? ' 
 
 ' Anything at all. A chop or a steak would do.' 
 
 ' Is it a chop or a steak ? Glory be to goodness, we 
 haven't had a bit of fresh mate since the butcher died.' 
 
 Once it was two cattle-dealers who came into the hotel 
 where he was at breakfast. They had been ' abroad ' in 
 the fair since the dark of the morning. The elder one 
 ordered a beefsteak for breakfast, smacking his lips over 
 the order. Presently the beefsteak came, fizding on 
 its dish. The elder man pulled up his sleeves, took the 
 carving-knife and fork, divided the steak, putting half 
 on to the younger man's plate, and set to at his own 
 portion. Before he could convey the first morsel to his 
 lips, the waiter intervened. ' I beg your pardon, sir : 
 are you forgettin' it 's Friday mornin' ? ' 
 
 Down went the hands heavily. For a second there 
 was a dead silence. Then the elder cattle-dealer spoke 
 quietly, as one who controls himself by a tremendous 
 effort. 
 
 ' I 've been comin' to this house, man and boy, for a 
 matter o' forty year, an' many 's the shiUin' I gave you, 
 and many 's the bit o' money I 've left in it. But that 's 
 aU over and done wid.' Then, his voice rising in bitter 
 indignation, ' Take it away : take it to the divil. Friday, 
 indeed ! Musha, bad luck to you ! May the divil 
 Friday the sowl out o' ye ! Bring six eggs.' 
 
 When I hear the County Councils, or even the Dublin 
 
 Corporation railed upon, I remember B 's tales of 
 
 the Grand Juries, and how the distich about the gentle- 
 man who ' out of his extreme bounty built a bridge at 
 the expense of the County,' was applicable and applied 
 all over Ireland. My fatiter used to be very eloquent 
 about the good roads made and the good bridges built, 
 ' adjacent,' as the Irish say, to the residences of the 
 Grand Jurors. B 's reminiscence was : 
 
 ' The County Surveyor under the Grand Jury in 
 
GOOD STORIES 39 
 
 Co. was a great man. His place would be as bare 
 
 as your head till the day Came to p'ass the accounts of 
 the road-contractors, etc. Then his lawn would be like 
 a yard at the Limerick Junction with cattle, sheep, pigs, 
 ducks, geese, turkeys, and chickens. A man coming in 
 would say : " Would your Honour pass my little 
 account ? " " Oh, I don't see your name down in the 
 mistress's present-book." " Oh yes, your Honour, I 
 brought a little boneen." " Well, 1 don't see your name 
 here ; but maybe the mistress forgot to enter it. I '11 
 pass your account." ' 
 
 B added that you could always tell when you w«re 
 
 approaching the house of a Grand Juryman by the well- 
 kept roads, etc. 
 
 Let me teU the other stories as they occur to me. 
 They were told by various people ; an editor, a Capuchin 
 friar, many priests, who are great story-tellers, and 
 another of the officials, who have the best opportunity 
 for odd experiences among the country-people. This 
 latter, watching an Aran Islander sowing his thin crop 
 of oats on the rock just sprinkled over with soil, said to 
 him : ' Why don't you|use aU the sea-weed and dead 
 fish lying about for that|poor land of yours ? It would 
 make the finest of manure.' 
 
 The old fellow looked at him with a twinkling eye. 
 ' Arrah, cock it up with manure ! ' he said. ' Sure it 's 
 humbhn' this land wants.' 
 
 Here is another story of J. C. S.'s. He arrived one 
 day at a railway station, depending on the train being 
 late, and found it gone. ' Surely the train wasn't up to 
 time ? ' he said to the porter. ' She was, thin,' said the 
 porter. ' She 's the punctuallest train in Ireland, and — 
 a great inconvanience to the traveUin' public' 
 
 J. C. S. said of his own stony-broke condition : ' Sure 
 I 'm always draggin' the divil be the tail, an' only a 
 slippery hoult of it at that.' 
 
 The time of the big strike J. C. S. stood on the coal 
 quay at Kingstown where the strikers' children were 
 picking up coal, to watch a fight between two of them 
 
40 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 and see fair-play, as he put it. While he looked on, a 
 small boy of about six years old came to him, black as 
 the pit from head to foot. He opened two grimy paws, 
 and in each of them was a ha'penny. ' I wonder whether 
 you 're man enough to toss me for the two o' them,' he 
 said. 
 
 Any one who knows the delicious gaiety and courage of 
 the DubUn gamigi will appreciate diis story. Clean or 
 dirty, most often dirty and half-starved, their white akin 
 showing through their rags, their poor little feet frost- 
 bitten in the winter, they are the most delightful 
 creatures possible. 
 
 J. C. S. left a hotel at A just as a party of stiff 
 
 tailor-made English ladies arrived. ' I wonder how 
 they '11 get on with Mrs. Reddy,' he said, and chuckled 
 to himself. Three weeks later he came back. ' And 
 how did you like the ladies who came the day I left ? ' 
 ' Ladies ! Is it ladies ? Och, them was the quare 
 ladies ! You wouldn't beheve the nonsense was in them. 
 They was always wantin' a clane tablecloth an clane 
 sheets to their beds. An' table napkins, no less ! Och, 
 them was the ladies we wor glad to see the last of ! I '11 
 tell you what, Mr. S. There 's some people in this 
 world that think they can go into a hotel an' make a 
 convaniance of it.' 
 
 J. C. S.'s Board had built a harbour on the west coast. 
 After it was finished a letter of complaint came from the 
 parish priest. The harbour was all wrong : it was full 
 of big stones ; the pier was no good, and so on. J. C. S. 
 was sent down to investigate. He wasn't known in 
 those parts as he is in most of the west country. Walking 
 down the street he came upon the parish priest surveying 
 the harbour and the pier with obvious approval. ' This 
 is a nice harbour you have here,' said J. C. S. ' It is so,' 
 said the P. P. ' There isn't a nicer little harbour in 
 Connaught.' ' Then why did you write this ? ' pro- 
 ducing the letter. The old priest put on his glasses, 
 took the letter, and looked at it. ' Ah, sure,' said he, 
 ' that was only makin' me little case. Sure you didn't 
 
GOOD STORIES 41 
 
 spend all the money that was granted.' ' Oh, I see. 
 What do you want now ? ' ' Well, maybe, a bit on to 
 the pier.' ' How much do you want on to it ? ' * Well 
 now, do you see the little ducks disporting themselves 
 in the water I That one with the green head is a drake. 
 If you 'd just give us the little pier as far as the drake 
 I 'd be satisfied.' 
 
 Here is a priest's stories : — 
 
 Pius X,, receiving Abbot Gasquet, whom he afterwards 
 made a cardinal, said to hiip : 
 
 ' I understand. Father Abbot, that you nearly became 
 Archbishop of Westminster.' 
 
 ' Yes, Holy Father : but the Holy Ghost thought 
 otherwise.' 
 
 ' Oh no, my son, not the Holy Ghost — ^Propaganda.' 
 
 When Lord Killanin contested Galway as a Unionist 
 he was opposed by the priests. His father. Lord Morris 
 of Spiddal, a famous wit, spoke at one of the election 
 meetings. He always spoke with a tremendous brogue, 
 which certainly helped him as a wit and story-teller. 
 
 ' I hear,' said he, ' that the Bishop and Father Dooley 
 are opposing me son Martin. Well now, I '11 teU ye a 
 little story. Meself and me son Martin went to Rome 
 when our Holy Father, Leo the Thirteenth, was Pope. 
 We went to have what 's called an audience of the Pope. 
 We were in a grand room, with a golden throne in it, and 
 all around the marble walls there were people standing, 
 and meself and me son Martin along with them. Then 
 the Pope came in and he took the golden chair, and he 
 says, ' Is that you, Martin Morris ? Come up here, 
 and sit down beside me.' And me son Martin went and 
 sat on the golden throne beside our Holy Father. I 'd 
 like to know what the Bishop and Father Dooley have 
 to say to that ! ' 
 
 Here is a story of Lord Emly's. He was being driven 
 by a very intoxicated driver. The car lurched from 
 side to side in imminent danger of upsetting. Presently 
 the car-driver tried to light his pipe, but could not 
 manage to put the match to the pipe. He turned round 
 
42 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 and said solemnly : ' Me Lord, wonderful are the ways 
 of Nature ! ' ' They are ; but why do you think of that 
 now ? ' ' Well, me Lord, ye see this horse — he 's a 
 child o' Nature, isn't he ? ' ' Yes, I suppose he is.' 
 ' Well, me Lord, the dumb baste can^dhraw you an' me 
 an' the car. An' look at me, that 's a man ! I can't 
 even dhraw me own oidd pipe.' 
 
 Father John, 'Capuchin, now a chaplain in Palestine, 
 was another story-telldr. One of his stories was of an 
 old-fashioned priest who had a new curate, with new- 
 fangled ways, which perturbed the old man. There were 
 a few priests to dinner. The P. P. pushed the decanter 
 to the curate. ' Mix yourself a glass of grog.' ' No, 
 thank you, I never drink.' P. P. (suspiciously), ' Have 
 a cigar ? ' No, thank you, I never smoke.' P. P. 
 (watchfully), ' You '11 join us in a game of cards ? ' 
 ' No, thank you, I never play cards.' P. P. (furiously), 
 ' Here, let me see your papers. Are you a priest at all ? ' 
 
 A priest who had been on the mission in London told 
 me iJiat once on a London 'bus he heard the conductor 
 say to the driver, ' Hey, BiU ! ' ' Wot yer want ? ' 
 ' There 's a bloomin' bloke in there wot 's sayin' the Mass 
 out of a book.' ' Chuck him aht ! ' 
 
 Another story was said to have been told by Dr. Croke, 
 the Archbishop of Cashel, who loved a good story. The 
 priests always love a story at the expense of each other 
 or their order. The story was of an old parish priest 
 on whom his curates were always playing tricks. One 
 morning when the three met at the breakfast table one 
 of the curates opened the FreematCs Journal, glanced 
 down the sheet, and then, with an appearance of the 
 greatest amazement, mingled with horror, handed the 
 paper to his fellow-curate. ' What is it, boys ? ' asked 
 the old priest. ' Well, it seems incredible, but the 
 paper reports that the Holy Father is going to remove 
 the discipline which prevents priests marrying.' They 
 waited for an explosion, but the old priest said very 
 slowly, ' Musha, the mischief bother him ! Why didn't 
 he do it fifty years ago ? ' 
 
GOOD STORIES 43 
 
 ' What religion is Mrs. So-and-So ? ' some one was 
 asked. ' I can't rightly remember, but I ]qiow it 's the 
 same religion as Mrs. Cassidy's cock.' Mrs. Cassidy's 
 cock was a Plymouth Rock. 
 
 Another story told humorously by an old Archbishop 
 was of a priest who was supposed to imbibe too freely, 
 who had come on a visit for purposes of observation and 
 reclamation. The good old man was very anxious to 
 do something to help the weak one. One day he thought 
 he detected traces of his having ' exceeded.' He 
 approached the culprit gently. ' Drink is a terrible 
 thing.' ' It is, indeed, your Grace.' ' It is terrible above 
 aU for a priest ; it gives such a bad example.' ' So it is, 
 your Grace, an awful thing ! ' ' You never exceed 
 yourself ? ' ' Is it me ? The Lord forbid ! ' ' And 
 yet people say things,' said the Archbishop sadly. 
 ' People have told me things about you. I 'm not saying 
 I beUeve them all. It 's wiser to believe no more than 
 
 the half of what you hear. Still ' ' I 'm just the ■ 
 
 same myself, your Grace. I don't believe more than 
 half the stories I 'm told about you.' ' What could I 
 do,' asked the Archbishop, telling the story, ' but let 
 him down Hghtly, he having let me down so lightly ? ' 
 
 Two more stories and I am done. The first is about 
 Lord O'Brien of Kilfenora, who was popularly known in 
 Ireland as ' Pether the Packer,' because of his supposed 
 packing of juries in the Land League days. Lord O'Brien 
 was travelling between Bray and Dublin in a non-smoHng 
 carriage when another passenger began to smoke. They 
 were alone in the carriage. Lord O'Brien objected. 
 The stranger persisted in smoking. Lord OjBrien, in a 
 towering rage, handed his card to the offender warning 
 him that he would have him prosecuted. They were 
 nearing Dalkey Station. As the train ran into the station 
 .the man got up and said, ' Well, since you 're so dis- 
 agreeable, I 'd better get into a smoker,' and went off. 
 Lord O'Brien called the guard and indicated the dis- 
 appearing smoker. ' Go and take that man's name and 
 address,' he said. ' You must prosecute him for smoking 
 
44 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 in a non-smoking carriage, and call me as witness.' The 
 guard went off, most unwillingly; the law is always un- 
 popular in Ireland. Just as tie train was beginning to 
 move he came back and put his head in at the carriage 
 window. He had a card in his hand. ' Sure I '11 prose- 
 cute him with the greatest of pleasure,' said he. ' Just 
 look at the Uttle card he gave me. You 'd never guess 
 who he is. Wh^^ — Pether the Packer, th' ould villain ! ' 
 
 Lord Granard was admiring a pen of very fat pigs at 
 a show, while the proud owner stood by and hstened to 
 the praise of them. ' Aye, sure,' said he, ' 'tis thrue for 
 your Lordship. They 're in lovely condition. If we 
 were aU as fit to die as them pigs it would be well for us.' 
 
 There are plenty more stories where these come from, 
 but enough is as good as a feast. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 
 
 We had not been long at Shankill before we discovered 
 that we had some remarkable neighbours. 
 
 One day when I was dressing to go into towii a victoria 
 drove up to the door, and out of it was assisted a very 
 old lady. My twelve-year-old daughter entertained her 
 tiU I could come, and told me afterwards how she had 
 noticed and commented on china and photographs and 
 curios of various kinds in the room. ' And what is 
 that ? ' she had asked, indicating a small black object in 
 a dim corner, which might well escape keen, young 
 vision. It was an ancient child's chair in oak, carved 
 curiously with a Crucifixion. ' Bring it out and show it 
 to me, my dear,' she commanded. ' I thought it had 
 an interesting look.' 
 
 That was the beginning of a very delightful friendship 
 with a wonderful old lady, Mrs. Rowan Hamilton. She 
 was ninety-two then, and age had hardly impaired her 
 keen interest in life and her fine intelligence. To begin 
 a warm friendship at ninety-two is, I think, something 
 few people would be capable of. It was begun, very 
 soon established, and has but grown warmer with the 
 years that have passed since then. 
 
 She lived, and lives, at Shanganagh Castle, close by 
 us, which had belonged to Sir George Cockburn, her 
 husband's grandfather. The family seat of the Rowan 
 Hamiitons is at KiUyleagh in Co. Down, and her eldest 
 daughter had married their neighbour at Clandeboye, 
 Lord DuflFerin. Sir George Cockburn was a notable 
 person. He it was who was in charge of Napoleon on 
 the fateful voyage to St. Helena — ' our mighty passenger,' 
 
 46 
 
46 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 as the captain of the Northumberland described him. 
 The great little man must have been satisfied with Sir 
 George Cockburn's treatment of him, for at Shanganagh 
 Castle, among many famous rehcs, is the gold snuff-box 
 presented to Sir George by his prisoner. 
 
 By the way, I never looked at those grey waters from 
 the end of the road without remembering the treasures 
 that lie sunk beneath them. In or about 1 820 Sir George 
 Cockburn, who was a great collector, with Lord Clon- 
 curry, followed Lord Elgin's example and went looting 
 precious things in Greece and Rome. Each acquired a 
 shipload, and, by the irony of things, they travelled 
 safely as far as Killiney Bay where they met with a 
 violent storm. Sir George Cockburn got his precious 
 cargo in safely, but Lord Cloncurry's ship was wrecked, 
 and sank, with all her treasures, within a stone's throw 
 of the land. There she lies with her heavy freight of 
 marbles, sunk deep in the sands, I suppose beyond any 
 hope of salvage. 
 
 Sir George's ' collection ' adorns Shanganagh Castle. 
 There is a whole room lined with cinerary urns from the 
 catacombs, " and there is a gallery filled with noble 
 sculpture. The coffin of the Queen of Sheba — so I have 
 heard it called — z huge marble sarcophagus, stands in 
 the haU ; where there is also a magnificent Greek head 
 with a curling beard and sightless eyes — ^Homer perhaps. 
 I am not sure that some of the children of the house are 
 not prouder of the bust of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, 
 the Irish rebel of 1798, which stands in the ballroom, 
 for that is the way of the Anglo-Irish. I have known 
 many a one who anathematises Easter Week, 1916, make 
 it their proudest boast that they had a great-grandfather 
 out in 1798. 
 
 Sir George ' collected ' thoroughly. Many years ago 
 an ancient cross disappeared mysteriously from an old 
 graveyard in the neighbourhood of Shankill. Perhaps 
 it was no one's business to look for it. Anyhow it 
 remained untracked till a learned antiquary visited 
 Shanganagh Castle, in recent years, and recognised, 
 
MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 47 
 
 among the objects of Sir George's ' collection,' the old 
 cross. Sir George's descendants very readily restored 
 it to its proper place. 
 
 He naust have been a broad-minded person, for he 
 presented an altarpiece to the Catholic church at Little 
 Bray, of which later the famous wit, Father Healy, was 
 pastor. Father Healy was very often an honoured guest 
 at Shanganagh Castle. 
 
 My friendship with Mrs. Rowan Hamilton was of rapid 
 growth. I gave her my newest novel at that date. Rose 
 of the Garden, which is perhaps hardly a novel at all, 
 since it is a linking-up of the story of Lady Sarah Lennox, 
 with the thinnest thread of fiction by way of drawing 
 together and filling in. I had drawn copiously and 
 without permission on the Life and Letters of Lady Sarah 
 Lennox, edited by Lord Ilchester and his mother, the 
 Dowager Countess ; and to that there is a sequel which 
 I may mention out of its proper place in order of time. I 
 may say that I had many terrors before and about the 
 time of the Rose's appearance lest I should be injuncted. 
 Whether because the book was too obscure to attract 
 attention, or because of the magnanimity of the noble 
 editors, the Rose bloomed undisturbed. She was one of 
 my trilogy of historical novels which were very kindly 
 handled by the reviewers, who, in this case, did not 
 detect my patchwork, but took my invented Journal of 
 Lady Sarah as genuine with the Letters. 
 
 Oddly enough, the time came when I had a chance 
 of making reparation for not asking leave, which might 
 well seem unmannerly, but was only because I was so 
 afraid of being refused after I had written the book, and 
 that would have been very awkward. I was so much in 
 love with my subject that I had written the book in a 
 rush which gave no time for asking permission. Some 
 three years after Rose of the Garden was published, I 
 was living in an old Mayo house, partly furnished. 
 While we were in the house we came to be well acquainted 
 with the pictures it contained ; and I was interested to 
 find, hanging above a doorway, a framed print of a Mid- 
 
48 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Victorian gentleman in a frock-coat, signed ' Ilchester.' 
 It certainly was a curious little coincidence. 
 
 Two years later there was an auction in the house, 
 and I bought the print, with two or three others ; one 
 an unidentified gentleman who serves at present as a 
 bedroom fire-screen, and may be some one very interest- 
 ing. After I had acquired the print we discussed its 
 value with Lor^ Killanin, who was spending a week-end 
 with us. He thought it would possibly be of consider- 
 able value to the family, and was very much interested 
 in what price I should ask. I wrote to the Dowager 
 Lady Ilchester, who was frankly dehghted to hear of my 
 find. The print, which represented her late husband's 
 uncle, was much prized in the family, she wrote, and her 
 copy of it had been burnt in a fire at her country house. 
 If I had been a commercial-minded person her frankness 
 would have given avarice a chance. She asked me what 
 she should send me for it. I, being a Celt, having con- 
 sidered with enjoyment the profit that might be made 
 out of my find, refused to take anything, and sent the 
 print off to her. As she, too, is Irish she probably 
 did not think me as mad as an English person would. 
 To be sure the sum I had paid for it was ridiculous, and 
 I owed reparation. Lady Ilchester has written me some 
 deHghtful letters, and I write this book with one of the 
 magnificent quills from the Ilchester Swannery at 
 Abbotsbuiy. 
 
 But to return to Mrs. Rowan Hamilton and ' Sally,' 
 as Mr. George Wyndham, her great-grand-nephew, called 
 my heroine. This modern great old lady was very much 
 delighted with the book. She established an immediate 
 ' link with the past ' in the friendship of her aunt with 
 Lady Sarah. Somewhere I have a letter detailing the con- 
 nection, which I have put away so carefully that I cannot 
 find it. It is probably in some book or other. The 
 letters I most cherish I have put into books for some 
 years past. They remain clean and they are safe, even 
 if you do lose them. I am occasionally reproached with 
 this habit by one who keeps aU his papers on the floor, 
 
MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 49 
 
 whence they mount like a foamy tide, swirling about the 
 islet of a chair and desk in a room which is safe from the 
 housemaid. I answer that nothing is lost when you 
 know where it is, generally speaking; and when I go 
 hunting in books for the letter I want, if I do not find it 
 I find something else equally precious. 
 
 My dear old lady estabUshed a connection between 
 her aunt and Lady Sarah in the days when the King of 
 England was ' Sally's ' suitor, while she was stUl Lady 
 Sarah Lennox, not Lady Sarah Bunbury nor Lady 
 Sarah Napier. But that, I think, can hardly have been 
 possible unless it was a great-aunt. The friendship 
 must have been o£ a later date, for this aunt was the 
 adopted daughter of the Court Physician who committed 
 suicide because the Princess Charlotte died in child- 
 birth when he was in medical charge. Mrs. Rowan 
 Hamilton insists that it was an aunt, not a great-aunt ; 
 and she ought to know. 
 
 This aunt it must have been who used to quote Lady 
 Harcourt against my old lady and her brother when they 
 were children. 
 
 ' My dear aunt used to say when she thought we were 
 very wild — she was rather old-fashioned in her ideas— 
 " What would Lady Harcourt have said if she could have 
 known what the present race of young people are coming 
 to ? How shocked she would have been ! " And my 
 dear, would you believe it ? my brother said one day, 
 "Oh, damn Lady Harcourt ! " My dear, it was as 
 though some one had fired a gun off at my poor, dear 
 aunt's ear.' 
 
 I have many letters from my great old lady, but, since 
 we met constantly during the three years following our 
 first meeting, the letters were not much more than notes. 
 In one of those early letters she mentioned that she had 
 twenty grandchildren and twenty-seven great-grand- 
 children. There have been additions since then. I 
 have a picture of five generations — ^my old lady, the 
 Dowager Lady Dufferin, Lady Plunket, Mrs. Rhodes, and 
 the latter's baby daughter. And, alas ! some have been 
 
50 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 taken away : five of her grandsons, Archibald Rowan 
 Hamilton, the heir to Killyleagh, Denys Stephenson 
 and his brother, Lord Basil Blackwood, and his elder 
 brother, the Marquess of DufFerin. 
 
 She was pretty constantly driving up to my door 
 during those years in her victoria when the days were 
 warm, in her brougham in winter. Nearly all her notes 
 refer to those calls or to some visit of mine to her. Now 
 and again she had a party to meet Lady Dufferin, or 
 her other daughter. Lady Nicolson, now Lady Camock. 
 She enjoyed her parties, and was almost feverishly 
 anxious that none of her guests should be neglected, so 
 that she was usually very tired after one of these occasions. 
 Often when she drove to my door I used to sit with her 
 in her carriage for a talk, to save her mounting our 
 rather steep steps. She was fond of bringing gifts, a 
 bunch of grapes, strawberries, tomatoes, a brace of 
 grouse from Scotland, snipe from Qo, Down : these last 
 when I was not well. And she always carried oflE some 
 books to read. Our friendship is now six years old, 
 and she has frequently during those six years talked of 
 failing eyesight ; but she still, I believe, reads up to 
 ten o'clock at night. 
 
 After Lady Sarah she was greatiy interested in another 
 dear and great old lady to whom I was much devoted, 
 Mrs. Blackwell, Lady of the Manor of Chipperfield and 
 King's Langley, Herts. Mrs. Rowan Hamilton had 
 happy associations with Hertfordshire and another 
 Manor House, but that, I think, was somewhere about 
 Tring. I must have lent her a Cornhill article on the 
 ' Lady of the Manor,' to which this note refers. It is 
 dated only ' Sunday ' : she seldom put a fuller date. 
 
 ' The Cornhill arrived last night, and now I have to thank you 
 for two books, and I want to talk over both with you and ask 
 some questions ; both were of great interest to me. But I am 
 not your bright, fresh, old lady of 80, but actually twelve years 
 more, 92. I feel surprised as I write down these figures, but 
 my great age prevents my doing more m the way of visiting, 
 and excuses my writing letters, especially as we live near. I 
 
MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 51 
 
 hope to see and talk things over with you, and I wonder what 
 day and what hour would suit you ? And then weather has to 
 be considered, for you could not walk here in the rain. . . . 
 
 ' I wonder if your old lady lived at or near Ashridge. I have 
 walked up that hill often when I was about seventy years old. 
 My dear friend who lived close by died about twenty years ago. 
 I have not been in Herts for ten years.' 
 
 Now I have found the passage for which I have been 
 looking : — 
 
 ' I had an old aunt who lived about George the Third's Court, 
 and was present at the game of Hide and Seek with the King 
 and heard her call out, " King, King, here am I ! " and many 
 other things in your book she used to talk about.' 
 
 During those nearly three years at Shankill we met 
 constantly. The wonderful friendship had no languors 
 or pauses in it. When there were other people present 
 in her drawing-room, I record with pride that I was the 
 favoured one. It was my happy privilege to sit close to 
 her chair within-doors, to occupy the seat with her when 
 she sat down in the beautiful old Italian garden with 
 its clipped yews. I dare say other people were very 
 jealous : I hope they were. As we sat together she told 
 me many things. In those early days she used to go to 
 parties, and sometimes she would drive me, or she wrote : 
 ' I shall call for you at three to-morrow if it is fine, and take 
 you to pay any calls you wish to pay.' Under her wing 
 I returned calls two years overdue, not through any 
 disinclination of mine to pay them, but because I had 
 no carriage to get about. In those cases, I believe, I 
 left cards without risking a chilly reception. Another 
 friend, Lady Harrel, had also offered to drive me to pay 
 calls. She had said, referring to the belated return 
 calls, ' You need not think I am going to drive you up 
 to the doors of those justly affronted people. I shall 
 wait round the corner.' Under the segis of my dear, 
 great old lady I delivered pasteboards at various houses 
 and fled. She made my excuse for not going in. 
 
 About that adjective ' great,' she objected once. ' I 
 
52 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 am only great in that I am a great age. My dear, if you 
 could know what a burthen it is ! ' 
 
 Yet she enjoyed her age. One day, that first summer, 
 she was at a garden-party at Lord Powerscourt's.' Lord 
 Aberdeen, the then Viceroy, was there, and asked to be 
 introduced to her. The finest of fine gentlemen, he 
 sat and talked with her. She was quite pleased at the 
 little incident. ,1 remember a day, a couple of years later, 
 when I came into the drawing-room of the Viceregal 
 Lodge and said, ' I have been spending the afternoon 
 with a most wonderfvd old lady of ninety-four.' Lady 
 Aberdeen said, in her quick girlish way : ' It must have 
 been Mrs. Rowan Haimlton ; but I can beat you, Mrs. 
 Hinkson, for I have been at tea with an old lady of a 
 hundred,' and so she had. 
 
 There were days when my dear old lady was very 
 bright and gay, when it seemed absurd to think of her 
 as approaching her hundredth year, as there were days 
 when she was quiet with the burden of her years. She 
 kept up her interest in the great as in the little world. 
 Of course, with two sons-in-law in the forefront of 
 diplomacy, a daughter who had been Vice-Reine in India 
 and Canada and Madame L'Ambassadrice at Paris and 
 Rome and St. Petersburg and Constantinople, she was 
 very exceptionally in touch with the great world. By 
 the way, there was a little room off the drawing-room at 
 Shanganagh Castle, filled with memorials of one kind 
 or another of the family. There, in the case with 
 Napoleon's snuff-box, were many other wonderful relics 
 of one kind or another. There were the pictures of the 
 children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 
 Among them was Lady Dufferin in the great days of the 
 Indian Viceroyalty, in splendid evening-dress with the 
 blue ribbon of an order across her breast, the tiara of 
 jewels in her hair, looking truly a queen. Nothing could 
 be simpler than the gentle httle lady in black whom one 
 used to meet at her mother's parties, ready to talk to all 
 the circle, lively or duU, significant or insignificant. 
 Once she came to see me with her mother, and there 
 
MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 53 
 
 was an occasion on which we travelled to town by the 
 same train, but not together ; I, as became me, waiting 
 to be asked. The old lady said afterwards : ' My 
 daughter would have liked to talk to you on the way up 
 to town, but she did not like to oifer herself. She is 
 very shy.' 
 
 It was strange to think of this lady who had filled so 
 many great positions worthily being shy — ^in my regard. 
 I have always regretted the opportunity her incredible 
 shyness lost me. 
 
 Later, in reading for review her Russian and Turkish 
 Journals, it was delightful to come upon the revelations 
 of her gaiety, her girlish fun, which peeped out now and 
 again from these letters, describing great events, written 
 to her mother. Lord Dufferin had the gaiety and quick 
 humour without which greatness is incomplete. It was 
 good to see how in every way this extraordinarily fascin- 
 ating and lovable man had found the other half of 
 his soul. 
 
 Now to my talks with Mrs. Rowan Hamilton. A 
 first reminiscence reminds one of Mr. George Wynd- 
 ham's happy marriage. It was a story of a meeting 
 with Lady Grosvenor at a garden-party, when she said, 
 looking about for some one : ' Oh, but have you seen 
 my George ? You must see my George.' 
 
 Another told how Lord Dufferin, as a boy of sixteen, 
 visited Skibbereen during the Black '47, and was so 
 shocked by what he saw of the famine victims that he 
 raised ^1600 on the property that was to dome to him 
 and gave it to be distributed among the starving people. 
 
 Another tale was that Nelson left his daughter, 
 Horatia, in trust to the EngUsh people, but nothing was 
 done for her. A cousin of Mrs. Rowan Hamilton, a 
 Mr. Gordon, who died leaving a good deal of money, 
 left a charge of 2 per cent, on all he died possessed of 
 to make a provision for Horatia Nelson : a tiny legacy 
 of ^50 left to Mrs. Rowan Hamilton being so reduced 
 
 to Z49- 
 
 She was greatly pleased when my husband was ap- 
 
54 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 pointed a Resident Magistrate, although not at all for 
 herself, she wrote — she was going to miss us dreadfully, 
 which was more than a mere politeness. Claremorris 
 was too far, but Wicklow would be vacant presently, 
 and when She time came she would use all the influence 
 the family possessed to bring us there. 
 
 I went to see her shortly before we left, and found her, 
 on a sleety Jaiiuary Sunday, seated by a roaring fire, 
 reading Punch. We had a quiet talk before other 
 visitors came in, and when I would have gone she held 
 me till she was once more alone, to talk about Mrs, 
 Delany, \dio was the heroine of my novel, Molly, My 
 Hearts Delight. She, as well as Lady Sarah Lennox, 
 had been a friend of Mrs. Rowan Haniilton's aunt, and 
 she and Dean Delany, when he was Dean of Dromore, 
 were frequent visitors at KiUyleagh. It was on that 
 day she told me of the 'Oh, damn Lady Harcourt ' 
 episode. ' What, indeed,' she said with great liveliness, 
 ' would Lady Harcourt have thought of my great-grand- 
 children ? There are those children at Old Connaught 
 (Lord Plunket's children, and their cousins. Lord 
 DuflEerin's children, were together at Old Connaught 
 because of iUness in the family of the latter). My great- 
 grandson, Terence Plunket, and his cousin went off to 
 Dublin the other day, quite unchaperoned. They are 
 twelve and fourteen. I asked them' what they went to 
 Dublin for. They said to buy animals. I asked what 
 animals ? Terence said, " I wanted two ferrets and 
 Patsy wanted a lizard." " Did you get them ? " " No, 
 though we went all over Dublin. So, as Patsy could 
 not get a lizard she took a white mouse." " Oh ! " I 
 said to Patsy, " and where do you keep the white mouse ?" 
 To tell you the truth, my dear, I was afraid she might 
 be carrying it about- with her. But she said, " In the 
 spare room." ' 
 
 She asked me if I had ever been inside Delville, the 
 Delanys' house at Glasnevin. I said I had not, although 
 the kind occupants of the house had sent me word 
 through Father Russell, when I was writing Molly, to 
 
MRS. ROWAN HAMILTON 55 
 
 come and see it. She said many of her family were 
 buried in the old churchyard which Mary Delany and 
 her husband used to enter by a postern gate from their 
 enchanting garden. 
 
 She talked also of her aunt's friendship with Fanny 
 Burney, and then she went on to discuss Mayo, to which 
 we were going. She was in a very lively mood, and re- 
 marked that she had very nearly married the grandfather 
 of the local magnate of our new station, and I said, ' I 
 wonder what he would have been like if you had ! ' the 
 ' he ' being the local magnate. 
 
 She held my hands when I stood up to leave, apolo- 
 gising for not sending the carriage with me. ' Those 
 children,' in the delightful emancipation of being hastily 
 rushed off to the freedom of an Irish country house from 
 the danger of infection, had borrowed the carriage. They 
 were all over the place — jumping up on outside cars, 
 driving and walking all over the country, doing just what 
 they liked, with no one to prevent them. 
 
 ' My dear,' she ended, on a high note of exhilaration, 
 ' what zvould Lady Harcourt have said ? ' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SIR DAVID AND LADY BARREL 
 
 The very pretty young lady who lived in the old, old 
 little house called Crinken Abbey, at Mrs. Rowan 
 Hamilton's gate, told me that the ghosts of the monks 
 used to tap at the garden door at night, or it might be 
 the ghosts of the monks. A bit of the old abbey stands 
 just inside the gates of the main entrance to Shanganagh 
 Castle. The very pretty young lady gave me this bit 
 of lore : ' Mrs. Rowan Hamilton says that her kitchen- 
 garden was once the graveyard of the monks. It grows 
 the best cabbages in the county.' 
 
 Other gates besides those of Shanganagh Castle, other 
 hearts besides my old lady's, were opened to us during 
 those happy years at ShankiU. Another deHghtful, fresh, 
 unexpected gift was the friendship with Sir David and 
 Lady Harrel. I cannot imagine what induced Lady 
 Harrel to ask some one to bring about a meeting between 
 us. I am not aware that she was interested particularly 
 in anything I had ever written, which is the usual reason 
 for seeking my acquaintance. She came from a staunch 
 Unionist stock, and I was notoriously Nationalist. It 
 was the happiest of inspirations, and one for which I 
 am deeply grateful. We were in many ways kindred 
 spirits. How fortunate we did not miss each other ! 
 
 That was one of the friendships one walks into without 
 let or hindrance, but happily, unlike some hastily-formed 
 friendships, it has stood the test of time. The Sunday 
 after that first meeting we walked up to the Harrels' 
 house, just under ' Katty Goligher,' that dearest of 
 mountains, to tea. After we had talked a while Sir 
 
SIR DAViD and lady HARREL 57 
 
 David came into the room. I remembered Sir David 
 as Chief of the Dubhn Police in my old rebellious days. 
 What could have seemed more unlikely in those days 
 than that he and I should ever be friends ? There 
 entered the room a very handsome, bearded man of a 
 distinguished presence. 'He had a rapid dominant 
 glance, and his eyes were as honest as the day. They 
 were and are the eyes of a sailor, clean, fearless, straight- 
 forward. You said to yourself that here was a man 
 who was absolutely straight. 
 
 ' Steel-true and blade-straight.' 
 
 You had only to look at him to trust him. 
 
 That was the beginning of a friendship which my 
 husband and myself have always regarded as a great 
 honour. It was the first Sunday afternoon of many on 
 which we climbed up the hill road to spend the interval 
 between lunch and dinner with these honoured and 
 beloved friends. We always had visitors of our own for 
 the Sunday-evening meal; and what a scamper home 
 we used to have, for one story led to another at the 
 Harrels' and we were always going and always turning back 
 to tell or listen to one more story. Usually our visitors' 
 train got in before we arrived, but we could always count 
 on their being received and entertained by our very 
 sociable family. One evening we walked home behind 
 some people we only knew by correspondence, feeUng 
 too shy to accost them. Oh, they were good days ! 
 How little we thought in those good days what was 
 coming ! 
 
 Sir David in his boyhood had been nominated for the 
 Navy, passed six weeks over age and rejected. Influence 
 with Sir James Graham at the Admiralty — the gentleman 
 who originated the verb to Grahamise — was used. He 
 replied that as the Crimean War was just over, they 
 were retiring on half-pay a number of lieutenants and 
 midshipmen, but a commission in the Army was offered, 
 which young David Harrel refused in favour of his eldest 
 brother. He then entered the Merchant Service as 
 
58 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 midshipman in the Dunbar Shipping Co., trading between 
 London, Australia, and New Zealand, and rounding 
 Cape Horn on the voyages. The captain, known to his 
 officers as ' Old Man,' was a Yortshireman, a frank hater 
 of the Irish. ' Old Man's ' salary was ^looo a year and 
 hatch-allowance, i.e. permission to barter anything he 
 could carry in a certain defined space round the hatches. 
 The vessels carfied first-class passengers between the 
 poop and the mainmast. The officers were in the cuddy, 
 behind ; second-class passengers were under the first- 
 class, and the middies behind" them. Thursdays and 
 Sundays were called champagne days, when the middies 
 dined in the cuddies with the officers. At Sydney a 
 carriage and pair awaited the captain, and there was 
 lavish entertainment, dinners, dances, etc., for the officers 
 and midshipmen. On one voyage the boat arrived off 
 Sydney Harbour at five o'clock, one hour before sunset. 
 The orders were that the harbour should not be entered 
 except in broad daylight, as it was a dangerous entrance. 
 ' Old Man ' cast anchor outside the harbour, and while 
 the passengers raged and stormed, he walked up and 
 down the deck with the most absolute indifference. 
 During the night a land-wind drove them eighty miles 
 out to sea. It took them two days to get in again, and 
 as they got near the harbour they discovered that the 
 coast was strewn with wreckage, dead bodies of men and 
 animals, portions of ships, etc., floating in the water. 
 Their sister ship, as well as others, had gone a total 
 wreck there three hours pre-viously. 
 
 Another time the crew deserted to join the rush to the 
 Bendigo Goldfields. The middies were called on to 
 unload, which they did. When it was done the vessel 
 warped to the opposite quay to take in a cargo consisting 
 of bales of wool, barrels of one thing and another, etc., 
 which the middies were asked to put on board. They 
 made a deputation to wait on ' Old Man ' in his cabin 
 to ask for compensation, but when they stood up before 
 him, so great was the awe he inspired that not one of 
 them could speak a word. However, they made their 
 
SIR DAVID AND LADY HARREL 59 
 
 case at last, and ' Old Man ' promised to put the matter 
 before the owners, as he had no power to give extra paj^. 
 The middies then set to work to load up, worked from 
 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., washed and changed, ai^d went off to 
 a dance where they danced till 2 a.m. ; slept then till 
 6 A.M. and started loading again. For this emergency 
 work half their premium was remitted in each case, the 
 premiums being ^60 for the first year, ^40 for the second 
 year, and ^30 for the third year. That happened on 
 David Harrel's third trip. He received rapid promotion, 
 being promoted third officer on this trip. He was offered 
 the position of second officer if he would remain in the 
 Service, but refused, and came back to Ireland and a 
 cadetship in the Constabulary. 
 
 ' I 'm not sure it wasn't a mistake,' he said. ' " Old 
 Man " died a very rich man.' 
 
 While he told it you felt as though you were reading 
 a page of Marryat. Sir David had been District 
 Inspector, Resident Magistrate, Chief Commissioner of 
 Dublin Metropolitan Police, Under-Secretary for Ireland, 
 and the years had not washed the sailor out of him. 
 The grey of the sea was in his eyes, the tan of it on his 
 wholesome skin, the salt of it on his lips. 
 
 I am persuaded that he was the ideal Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland. He has the dominant character, the sense 
 of justice, the strong will, the kindliness, the real love 
 and understanding of the people. As a Resident 
 Magistrate he went through the wild days of the Land 
 League in Mayo, the county of the Land League. He 
 loved the people and they loved him. ' A good, wild 
 people,' he once described them in my hearing. He 
 refused a police escort, and never needed one. In the 
 wildest time, when he was away from home for several 
 days and nights, he left his wife — ^indomitable as he — 
 and his young children with perfect confidence in a 
 lonely house in the midst of the wilds. Other people 
 would have said he carried his life in his hand. Neither 
 he nor she believed that. Lady Harrel told me that once 
 when his absence was unduly prolonged a man asked 
 
6o THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 to see her. ' I owe a trifle of money to his Honour,' 
 he said (the price of a calf or something of the kind), 
 ' an' I thought him bein' away you might want money, 
 so I brought it.' 
 
 I remember a story Sir David told me once about a 
 boy he had sent to jail — I forget for what ofience. The 
 boy had been in the habit of driving his car. AH 
 locomotion prettjr well in the West in those days was 
 by outside car. The boy served his sentence and came 
 no more. The first day after he had been released his 
 father came, driving the car. ' Where is Jamesy ? ' 
 asked Sir David. ' He 's at home, but he 's ashamed to 
 face your Honour.' ' Go back and tell him he 's to 
 come.' The father went and presently came Jamesy, 
 red-faced and uneasy. Sir David got up on his side of 
 the car and talked to him as though nothing had 
 happened. For both of them the whole unhappy 
 business had been wiped out. 
 
 A famous West of Ireland priest. Father Denis O'Hara, 
 said to me one day : ' Ah, he 's a good man, is Sir David. 
 I remember one day when there was a terrible row over 
 some of the Congested Districts Board land, and he and 
 I were in the middle of an excited crowd with black- 
 thorns, and upon my word, our lives didn't seem worth 
 much. I caught a glimpse of Sir David in the midst of 
 a surging mass of people and police, and there was a little 
 woman in a terrible state of excitement hanging on to 
 his beard, and the pohce were getting in around him, 
 and he was saying, " Don't hurt her, men, don't hurt her," 
 and trying to release himself with the greatest gentleness 
 you ever saw.' 
 
 Sir David used to call those Sunday-afternoon talks 
 ' mind talks,' and I believe they were as good to him and 
 Lady Harrel as they were to us. Of course he had known 
 everybody who was anybody in Ireland for forty years 
 back, and a great many in England. We used to do our 
 best to listen to his talk without intruding our own. 
 AU the history of that time was at his finger-ends. Like 
 some other big men I have known he was extraordinarily 
 
SIR DAVID AND LADY HARREL 6i 
 
 frank. When he trusted he trusted. I remember that 
 he said once of Lady Harrel, ' I am indiscreet sometimes ; 
 she never.' But he had his reservations. Readers of 
 my Twenty-Five Tears may recall the episode of the 
 Lady in Black. We were talking about it one day, and 
 I said that the Scotland Yard men were very keen to 
 know who she was : I had been told so at the time. He 
 said, ' Oh, indeed ; we knew aU about her.' But he said 
 no more, and although I was very curious I did not ask 
 him, understanding that it was one of his reservations. 
 
 One of those days, in June 191 3, I had gone up to 
 Dublin to buy books for the Carnegie Library in Shankill. 
 After a morning spent in the grime of second-hand 
 bookshops on the quays of Dublin, I was in the train 
 going to Harcourt Street Station on my' homeward way, 
 hoping that no one I knew would get in as I was in a 
 disgraceful condition, when I heard the newsboys shout- 
 ing something. I did not pay much heed, but the lady 
 who was with me leant forward and caught si^ht of a 
 poster. ' Death of an ex-Irish Chief Secretary,' she 
 said. It was George Wyndham's death they were calUng. 
 In almost exactly the same circumstances I had heard 
 of Mr. Parnell's death more than a score years earlier. 
 Mr. Wyndham had asked me to visit Clouds, and I had 
 not gone. We had been- invited to his son's wedding 
 two months earlier, and we had not gone. I had accepted 
 an invitation from his sister, Lady Glenconner, to visit 
 her at her Wiltshire home a week later than that day, 
 and I had had a hope in my mind of meeting the friend 
 I had never seen, where friendship had never failed us. 
 It was a great grief and shock, and the more poignant 
 because he too, like Parnell, had served Ireland and been 
 flung to the wolves by a certain section of Irishmen. 
 He was buried the day I ought to have arrived at Wilsford 
 Manor. 
 
 I have written of Mr. Wyndham elsewhere, so I shall 
 not here. But it made a sad difference to us that he was 
 gone. There was no one to turn to, one said at the time, 
 and one has often said it since, even though there are 
 
62 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 others to turn to who have always been ready to listen : 
 our way has been indeed sown thick with good friends. 
 
 I have said that still one hails as a friend and a right- 
 minded person the one who was a Parnellite. It is a 
 kind of freemasonry. So one turned to those who 
 admired and loved George Wyndham. So one is un- 
 forgiving to his enemies. They are very Uttle in evidence 
 in Ireland. I have never met but one : all other Irish 
 praise him. 
 
 One day — ^it would be the following St. Patrick's Day — 
 we were going to the Trooping of the Colours at Dublin 
 Castle, and travelled up with Sir David. We talked of 
 George Wyndham, whom he greatly liked and admired. 
 He had seen John Morley after the death, and he was 
 deeply distressed by it ; he had recalled the three young 
 men of a dozen years back who were in the very fore- 
 front of things : Curzon, Austen Chamberlain, and 
 George Wyndham. He had placed George Wyndham 
 first. It was at his golden moment, when he was Under- 
 Secretary for War. ' I looked to see him directing the 
 destinies of the Empire,' Morley had said. 
 
 George Wyndham said once to Sir David that he 
 trusted the House of Commons. His own great plan to 
 satisfy the Irish, which was destined to fail and to drag 
 him down vdth it, was probably in his mind. ' Make a 
 clean breast of it,' he said, ' and the House will be with 
 you.' ' You trust too much,' said Sir David, and added, 
 telling the story, ' It was his magnanimity destroyed him.' 
 
 Sir David had resigned the Under-Secretaryship to 
 Lord MacDonnell, then Sir Anthony. I remember an 
 evening in the early years of the century when I was 
 hostess at a Lyceum Club Irish Dinner, and Lor4 
 Killanin took me in. He said, during a talk about Irish 
 matters, ' There 's only one power in Ireland and that is 
 Sir Anthony.' Sir David had not been well, and thought 
 the damp mists of the Phoenix Park, where the Under- 
 Secretary's Lodge is, affected his health. He said, ' If 
 I 'd known what was going to happen to Wyndham 
 I 'd have sacrificed my hfe to prevent it.' He went on 
 
SIR DAVID AND LADY HARREL 63 
 
 to tell us of a visit he paid to 35 Park Lane after the 
 debacle, and the anguish in which he found George 
 Wyndham, and Lady Grosvenor for him. No one could 
 understand that anguish and despair unless those who 
 had imagination enough to see that the killing of a man's 
 dream may be the killing of his heart. 
 
 Another day, as we went up to town in the same carriage, 
 we talked about the Land League, with which / had had 
 nominal sympathies, while he, I supposed, would have 
 abhorred it. Secretly I had always thought it an ugly 
 and sordid, though necessary, revolution. I have had 
 less dislike of it since that day. He said : 
 
 ' When I was a young police-officer in the County 
 Tyrone — that was in the Sixties before the tenants had 
 any protection — ^I knew a whole countryside to be cleared 
 out of its little farms and holdings because a land-agent 
 wanted a park. And I knew a man whose people had 
 held their farm for over a hundred years, to be driven 
 back into the mountains and the bogs, so that the rich 
 little farm they had made with endless toil should be 
 given to the discarded mistress of the landlord. My heart 
 burnt within me at these things so that I could not sit 
 by and do nothing. I wrote of what I had seen and 
 known to Mr. Gladstone. It was a serious thing to do 
 at the time, for I was a young officer, and discipline was 
 very strict. I signed it in the name of my own son, at 
 that time a child of two and a half years.' 
 
 It was the measure of his simplicity that he should 
 have signed in the name of his little son. 
 
 ' And. that,' I said, ' was the genesis of the first Irish 
 Land BiU.' 
 
 ' It may have been. I asked John Morley when he 
 was writing Gladstone's Life to look for that letter among 
 the papers ; but I suppose he did not find it, as I never 
 heard.' 
 
 One day we were talking of what to do with our boys, 
 and the advisability of letting them have their own say 
 in the matter. Sir David said in his quiet way : 
 
 ' There was once a horse-dealer, poor Tom Meleady, 
 
64 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 a straight, true fellow, of whom I was very fond. He was 
 ill for some months before he died, and I used to go 
 and sit with him. He told me once about the old days 
 before the railways, when he used to lead a string of 
 horses from Galway to DubHn. " It was a long road," 
 he said, " but I never minded, being with the horses : 
 I was so fond of them always. I used to let them go 
 their own way, grazing when they wanted to, going on 
 again when they wanted to, never forcing them. The 
 great thing, sir, is for people to do the work they like 
 the way they like. Never try to turn any one from 
 doing the work he likes to do. The work is twice as 
 well done if a man has his heart in it." ' 
 
 There are many things Sir David told us, which are 
 too recent to be written here. And good stories, which 
 must come in their place with other good stories. We 
 laughed a great deal on those Sunday afternoons — ^when 
 we did not know the time was coming for laughter to be 
 all but extinguished. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DUNSANY 
 
 On a day when we were sitting in the library at Shankill 
 A. E. told us, among other things, about a picture of 
 Lord Dunsany's of a great snowy waste, with the print 
 of footsteps going across it, just the footsteps. I was 
 rather fascinated by the idea — ^very Dunsanyesque — and 
 I wrote some verses to accompany the picture, and 
 sent them to Lord Dunsany. A little later I had this 
 letter. 
 
 s.s. Adolf Woermann, 
 
 Off Port Said, Dec. zc)th. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Hinkson, — Of course I remember meeting you : 
 one does not meet a poet every day. I remember that you told 
 me you had just read a tale of mine in the Celtic Christmas, and 
 I was glad you liked it. I 've been away lion-hunting, but I '11 
 send you the picture as soon as I get home, which should be in 
 a few days after you get this. I 'd be delighted if it 's any use; 
 to you, but I 'm afraid the presence of a somewhat gruesome 
 beast that is nosing along after the footsteps may spoil it for you. 
 I think the poem is charming. 
 
 The picture is very roughly something hke this : 
 
 (He drew a very weird pen-and-ink sketch. A bit of snowy 
 land bounded by mountain peaks. All around space and the 
 stars. The footsteps, and the beast following, and at the edge 
 of Space is written, ' The End.') 
 
 It aU happened on a very thin world. You can see the stars 
 above it and stars underneath. The beast was supposed to be 
 Remorse, following some one all his Ufe. But this sketch is 
 rather a mess. I '11 send you the other soon. I 'm afraid it will 
 be no good to you. It was a great pleasure to see your poem. 
 
 I don't know what became of that poem. Probably 
 I shall find it some day in a book. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 A little later we, my Pamela and I, went down to the 
 Dunsanys. With Lady Dunsany one fell in love at 
 once. Nothing could be sweeter, gentler, more charm- 
 ing. Lord Dunsany was, I soon found, of the intem- 
 perate talkers, of which I was very glad, because he 
 paralysed me with shyness. He was well worth listening 
 to. He is a big, boyish man, who gives one the impression 
 of always having had his own way ; but though he 
 seemed overbearing in argument at first, and reduced 
 my opposition, such as it was, to pulp, he was really 
 very simple and in a sense gentle. He was like Steven- 
 son's Henley, who would roar you down in an argu- 
 ment and finally, after a deal of sound and fury, would 
 discover that you had points of agreement all the 
 time. 
 
 Dunsany kept a glorious tea-table in those pre-war 
 days. That first time I was too shy of Lord Dunsany to 
 enjoy my tea, but I watched him enjoying his, surrounded 
 by battaUons of little glass pots containing all sorts of 
 jams and honey, quite delicious to look at, to say nothing 
 of lavish supplies of cream, hot cakes, all manner of 
 sandwiches and tea-table delicacies. I am sure I could 
 have made a tremendous tea, but I did not : instead I ate 
 delicately and Ustened to Lord Dunsany demolishing the 
 work of the Christian era, especially in Rome, where he 
 said Christianity had destroyed the magnificent Pagan 
 Art. At last I said in a small and trembling voice : 
 ' Will no one say a word for Christianity ? ' But no 
 one did, though Lady Dunsany said, laughing, that 
 Dunsany was saying more than he meant, and that 
 Christianity had plenty to be said for it. 
 
 That evening I was rejoiced when Lord Dunsany 
 brought out his pictures to show me — extraordinary 
 pictures, as strange and fascinating as his stories. 
 Afterwards he read the stories, rolling out the magnifi- 
 cent names and the sonorous procession of the words 
 with great enjoyment to himself and me. Usually I 
 become sleepy while being read to, but I did not feel 
 at all sleepy. I knew he was enjoying himself, as I 
 
DUNSANY 67 
 
 was, and what could a good guest or a good host wish 
 for more ? 
 
 It was very amusing to hear Lord Dunsany talk about 
 his experience with publishers, who, being business men, 
 took it for granted that Lord Dunsany — a rich man 
 and a genius — ^would be content with glory and leave 
 the filthy lucre to them. They were distressed when the 
 noble author insisted on the business side of the agree- 
 ment. A little later Sidney Sime was telling at Dunsany 
 how much joy it gave Lord Howard de Walden to 
 receive a cheque for two guineas, earned by his pen. 
 After all it must be a delight to those to whom money 
 comes without any effort of their own to earn it. It 
 explains why Society ladies contribute to the magazines, 
 and the strenuous young aristocrat occasionally goes off 
 to work with his hands. 
 
 I remember an amusing thing Lord Dunsany told us, 
 in a certain vein of indignation, of an application received 
 from a London illustrated paper, offering hini two or 
 three guineas if he would contribute to a symposium 
 ' What it Feels Like to be a Millionaire.' He replied 
 that they had better ask Lord Howard de Walden 
 since he did not happen to be a millionaire and could 
 not know what a millionaire felt like. He received an 
 effusive letter of thanks for his interest in the symposium, 
 saying in conclusion that the Editor had acted upon his 
 kind advice and written to Lord Howard de Walden, 
 asking him to state for the benefit of their readers what 
 it felt like to be a millionaire. 
 
 Like all geniuses Lord Dunsany is very simple. At 
 dinner that first evening he asked me if I used salt or 
 bone-dust, and went on to explain that some one he had 
 met in a railway carriage had told him that a certain 
 table condiment had a large proportion of bone dust in 
 its composition. He grew very excited over the matter, 
 imagining what bones. It was almost as lurid as the 
 Times Kadaververtvertungsanstalt. After that occasion 
 every time I met him at table I asked him carelessly if 
 he used salt or bone dust. He always rose eagerly. 
 
68 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 ' Oh, you know about that, do you ? It 's extraordinary 
 how few people know ! You are the first person I 've 
 met, in fact . . .' 
 
 It was a charming house to stay at. Lady Dunsany 
 would have made any house charming, and Lord Dunsany 
 was, of course, extraordinarily interesting and very kind, 
 with the simplicity which was lovable and provocative. 
 
 (I am afraid <l speak of him as though he, as well as 
 those happy visits, were in the past tense, which, very 
 happily for many things and people, he is not.) 
 
 TTie hall at Dunsany was full of the heads of his big- 
 game shooting — ^terrible heads. Sidney Sime, that cynical 
 person, whom we met there — he was already an old friend 
 of my husband — ^in the early summer of the fateftd year, 
 professed to regard them as no more than common 
 trophies of slaughter — ^like legs of mutton, for example. 
 This point of view puzzled and somewhat depressed Lord 
 Dunsany. 
 
 He talked literature to me usually, but one day he 
 discussed rabbit stalking as a substitute for big-game 
 stalking, and waxed enthusiastic about it. 
 
 ' Oh, by Jove ! ' he said, ' it is grand sport. They 
 have such fine ears and they are off like the wind.' One 
 had a mental picture of bison or antelope, but it was 
 really rabbits. ' If the sun is behind you it throws your 
 shadow ; then it is difiicult and exciting, you have to 
 hide behind every grass blade as you get nearer and 
 nearer . . .' 
 
 Lord Dunsany is six-foot-four of height. 
 
 The atmosphere of the house was very literary. Lady 
 Dunsany had grown up to literature. Her father and 
 mother, when Lord Jersey was Governor of Austraha, 
 made a pilgrimage to Samoa to see Robert Louis 
 Stevenson. I have said that A. E, said of Lady Lytton 
 that she was more like a flower than any woman he ever 
 saw. Lady Dunsany was — ^is — ^very flower-like, a pansy 
 perhaps, or a wild anemone, something delicate and 
 shy, kind and gentle. I think all the talk was about 
 literary people and things. To be literary was to have 
 
DUNSANY 69 
 
 the entree to Dunsany ; I don't think other people, 
 counted. 
 
 The day after pur arrival Lord Dunsany went out 
 hunting, and we motored with Lady Dunsany to the 
 meet of the Meath Hounds, taking Tara on our way. 
 It was a very wild day, and when I was asked afterwards 
 my impressions of Tara I said it was a Big Wind, which 
 pleased Lady Dunsany : I have heard of that saying of 
 mine from an English correspondent whom I have never 
 seen, since then. 
 
 Padraic Colum had been at Dunsany just before us, 
 and had told little Randal Plunkett, the only son, of 
 various charms which would enable him to see the 
 palace on Tara and the Kings and Queens and Knights 
 and Ladies. I might have seen them, in the wind 
 perhaps, if I had not been trying to keep on my hat. 
 
 Lord Dunsany talked a good deal of Francis Ledwidge, 
 of whose discovery he was very proud, calling him 
 always ' Mr. Ledwidge.' 
 
 When we went there again in the early summer we 
 found H. G. and Mrs. WeUs already there. They came 
 in from the river to the glorious tea. I had always been 
 very much alarmed of H. G. Wells, because of a sentence 
 in one of his books. What that sentence was and why 
 it should have alarmed me is known only to myself. 
 Very much to my stupefaction I found myself walking 
 up and down, up and down, with him in the avenue 
 outside after tea. I was quite pleased with myself for 
 being so little afraid ; but the next morning when I was 
 walking with him again the terror returned. I was 
 dumb. I thought he was inordinately bored; perhaps he 
 was ; we could see Lady Dunsany sitting under a tree 
 in the distance teaching Randal his lessons. I asked 
 myself why any one should want to talk to me with that 
 distant prospect of Lady Dunsany. 
 
 ' Don't you feel that you want to go and do some 
 work ? ' I said to him. ' I am often taken that way 
 myself, being accustomed to industrious mornings.' 
 
 He said he did feel like that and went away, but he 
 
70 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 came back in a very short time and joined Lady Dunsany 
 and me under the tree, accusing me of having rudely 
 driven him away because I wanted to talk to Lady 
 Dunsany. But it wasn't that, though Lady Dunsany 
 was very good to talk to. 
 
 I admired Mr. Wells's sang-froid next morning, when, 
 while we waited for Lady Dunsany's appearance at the 
 breakfast-table, »the big spirit-lamp under the kettle went 
 a-fire. He was sitting half-in, hafi-out the open window, 
 explaining that it was an excellent position from which 
 to run away if the fire spread. It did spread, to the 
 tablecloth. I rang the beU frantically : no one else 
 did anything. Presently the butler came in and, 
 without flurry, enveloped the conflagration in a large 
 table napkin, putting it out. We must have looked 
 fools to him. One realised then the superiority of the 
 trained man to the mere intellectual. 
 
 Some of the party spent the morning on the river in 
 canoes. It was a small and muddy river. I preferred 
 terra firma, especially as Randal had danced about us, 
 shrieking joyfully : ' O Mummie, they 've got the 
 leaky boat. Isn't it fun ? ' It was Mr. Wells and 
 Pam who had the leaky boat. But the morning passed 
 without mishap. Lord Dunsany had gone off cricketing, 
 Sidney Sime and Joseph Holbrook arrived for lunch. 
 Sidney Sime was another person I was secretly afraid of. 
 He had decHned to illustrate a poem of mine, which my 
 husband had sent to him, with somewhat mordant 
 comments. And there was something merciless about 
 his brilliant drawings as I remembered them : I might 
 have said ' heartless and soulless ' before I met him. We 
 talked of mysticism — of aU things ! — on the tennis- 
 lawn after lunch. I am glad to believe that he was 
 sincerely sorry when he learnt that we were leaving that 
 afternoon. He and Joseph Holbrook came to see us 
 later at ShankiU. The latter had already set a lyric of 
 mine ' Summer-Sweet ' to music, so we were, in a sense, 
 old friends. When the war is over I hope to finish that 
 talk with Sidney Sime. 
 
DUNSANY 71 
 
 After all we were fortunate in our meeting with 
 H. G. Wells. My thirteen-year-old Pam had just 
 finished Mr. Polly. She had all the gags of it by heart. 
 He could not but be pleased : these are the kind of things 
 which please an author. He made a sketch in her 
 autograph-book of Mr, Polly, sitting on the stile, murmur- 
 ing ' Rotten, beastly stinkin' 'ole ! ' after Mrs. Polly 
 had given him that nice meal of cold pork and pickled 
 onions and cheese. Pam also instructed him on the 
 Irish question, a fact to which he has referred in Mr. 
 Britling sees it Through. 
 
 One of those days Lord Dunsany talked to Pam about 
 his big-game-hunting in something of these, terms : 
 
 ' While we breakfasted I said carelessly : " Well, 
 what are we going to do to-day ? " " Oh," said my 
 hunter, " I have my own little game on to-day. I will 
 tell you later." So, afterwards, when we had mounted 
 our horses he disclosed his plan to me. We were just 
 inside the border of the lion country, and he told me 
 that about 4 o'clock that morning two lions had come 
 down to the river beside which we camped, to drink, 
 and had roared lustily for about five minutes, through 
 which I had slept soundly : so he proposed hunting for 
 the day's work. I agreed, and we set off ; but luck 
 seemed to have deserted us that day. All the morning 
 we hunted, but it was midday before we sighted game, 
 and it was not a lion. ' 
 
 ' I was going a little ahead of my hunter when I per- 
 .ceived an enormous rhinoceros standing about thirty 
 yards away, and beyond him another, and beyond that 
 one yet another, and another. It so happened that my 
 hunter did not see the three beyond the first one, but 
 only the leader ; however, I did not know this at the 
 time. When he said " Shoot," pointing at the leader, I 
 raised my gun and fired. The rhinoceros swung round 
 and dashed blindly past us, the herd clattering behind. 
 I fired again and missed : I fired again and again, only 
 wounding him, until, just as he was charging, and it was 
 death for either of us, I fired and killed him. The 
 
72 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 herd, furious when they saw him fall, charged in a body, 
 but they went past us, and stopped with their heads up, 
 sniffing the air. Then they wheeled about and galloped 
 off into the forest. 
 
 ' We dragged the dead rhinoceros down to the river, 
 and that night we camped near him. When darkness 
 fell we went out and sat near him, with our loaded rifles 
 across our kne^s, waiting for the lions which we knew 
 would come to devour the remains. TTie frogs all started 
 barking with the coming of night, and kept up a regular 
 concert, barking against each other. And then, quite 
 suddenly, every sound ceased. There was not a move- 
 ment on the water nor on the land except the stealthy 
 pad-pad of the lions. 
 
 ' Sitting there in the darkness one realised how trivial 
 all the things of the civilised world were beside this 
 great thing, and how far away seemed that other world 
 of peaceful towns and villages and farms from this 
 wilderness where we sat clutching our rifles and waiting 
 for the king of beasts. 
 
 ' Then a most extraordinary thing happened. We 
 were suddenly enveloped in a thick mist, which wrapped 
 us round as in a cloak so that we could see nothing, but 
 we knew by the growling and roaring of the lions that 
 they had found their meat. All that night we sat there, 
 while the lions roared close beside us ; but, just before 
 dawn, they became quiet, and when the mist cleared 
 there was nothing to be seen but a single hyaena who 
 stood out for a moment from the forest, and fled at the 
 sight of two men sitting vdth rifles across their knees.' 
 
 I have not seen Lord Dunsany since that June of 1914. 
 Lady Dunsany came to lunch at Shankill a little later to 
 meet the two poets, Joseph and Nancy Campbell. 
 Nancy Campbell she knew already as Nancy Maude, who 
 had made a very romantic marriage. 
 
 We were to have gone to Dunsany very soon after- 
 wards, but aU those plans went down before the events of 
 August 1914. Black Monday had come and gone when 
 Pamela and my husband met Lord Dunsany in that 
 
DUNSANY 73 
 
 wonderful room at the top of Plunkett House, where the 
 Irish Homestead is edited under the eyes of Angels and 
 Archangels, Powers, Principalities, Dominions. Sidney 
 Sime said, visiting that room : * So this is where turnips 
 are made ! Good Lord, it 's a mad world ! ' Lord 
 Dunsany was saying : ' I shall never come back. None 
 of the officers will come back, certainly not a man of my 
 height.' And again he was denouncing the local 
 pohticians, with characteristic whirlwind energy, and 
 listening with a certain unexpected sweet reasonable- 
 ness to my husband's defence of them. 
 
 I asked Lady Dunsany once if she was not alarmed 
 when he was absent on his lion-hunting expeditions, 
 with no news coming through from him. She said, 
 ' I know he is a very good shot.' 
 
 Here in the West of Ireland where literature is held 
 in Uttle honour, except by an occasional priest, I sigh 
 for such a house as Dunsany. How different life would 
 be if our lot had placed us in Meath rather than in Mayo ! 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE REBELLION 
 
 I MUST return now to the great strike of 191 3 which had 
 in it, though we did not know it at the time, the beginnings 
 of greater things. It started with a general, or almost 
 general, tramway strike, and extended to the quay- 
 labourers and allied workers. It held up the trade of 
 DubUn for six months, caused untold misery and suffer- 
 ing, and in the end the men were beaten. That was the 
 genesis of the Easter Week, 1916, Rebellion. 
 
 The whole world that is interested in such things 
 knows that the conditions of labour in Dublin are 
 appalling. They cry to Heaven for vengeance. The 
 rooms in the tenement-houses are dreadful. TTiey are 
 crazy, toppHng old houses, some of them built in the 
 eighteenth century. When there is a big wind, or some- 
 times without any wind at all, they tumble down and 
 some people are killed. Then there is an outcry for a 
 few days until the thing is forgotten. There are twenty 
 thousand families in DubUn living in one-room tene- 
 ments. I believe there is a big housing scheme, but I 
 suppose it has been held up by the war, for the Dublin 
 slums continue and poverty is still more apparent in the 
 streets of DubUn than in any other city. Frowsy- 
 headed, shawled women are everywhere. There is quite 
 a considerable population of DubUn boys who sleep in 
 passages, or anywhere they can get cover. The ' hot 
 waU ' of Guinness's brewery used to be, perhaps stiU is, 
 a favourite out-of-door dormitory. These boys become 
 gipsies of a sort. Perhaps they would never take kindly 
 
 to habitations. The newsboys of DubUn are recruited 
 74 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE REBELLION 75 
 
 from this class. They go bare-footed in winter, and 
 if there is hard weather their poor feet get frost-bitten. 
 A kindly Dublin newspaper runs a Boot Fund ; but I 
 am not sure that boots on a stockingless foot which 
 leak presently are not worse than bare feet. 
 
 They are adorable, those newsboys. They have 
 beautiful manners ; they are the merriest things alive, 
 despite their wretched condition ; it is a delight to talk 
 to them, they are so quick and witty. They are innocent, 
 I am sure ; they are too joyous for anything but 
 innocence. 
 
 But the conditions of life in the tenement houses ! 
 Browning's skeleton horse in ' Childe Roland to the Dark 
 Tower Came ' : 
 
 * He must be wicked to have borne such pain,' 
 
 often occurs to me when I think of the decent slum 
 population of DubHn. The innocent ought not to 
 suffer such things ; and these people are in the main 
 innocent, honest, and respectable. 
 
 There is no parallel for it in England. If, on a 
 drenching Irish day, a woman and a child came to your 
 door hawking vegetables or fish, their poor coverings 
 drip-dripping in your decent hall, their faces blue and 
 
 E inched, you might think them outcasts, as they would 
 e in England. In Ireland they are probably as respect- 
 able as you, and of a higher degree of virtue. To any 
 one condemned to live in the Dublin slums, with their 
 rotten walls and filthy staircases, their appalling sanitary 
 conditions, their huddled crowdedness, wages more or 
 less hardly matter. The decent working population 
 has nowhere else to go to. That virtue could live and 
 thrive in such places is a proof of the divine in the 
 human spirit. 
 
 These slums are not byanymanner of means dangerous. 
 •No one will think of snatching your watch or knocking 
 you on the head. The people are, indeed, extremely 
 friendly. The one dangerous and scandalous bit of 
 Dublin is at the north-east corner. Unfortunately 
 
nd THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 that corner was spared when so much of Dublin was 
 burnt and blown to pieces, 
 
 A London editor wrote to me the other day of the 
 cellar population of London. In a phrase of terrible 
 eloquence he described their conditions. ' They live 
 in graves, without the peace of the grave.' Dublin 
 does not run much to cellars, but all of squaUd misery 
 that could be got between four walls is in some of those 
 slum rooms. 
 
 Some social reformers attribute the misery to the drink- 
 ing habits of the women. Others will teU you that the 
 estimate of these habits is grossly exaggerated. I have 
 very seldom seen a drunken woman in Dublin of late years. 
 Such a spectacle was commoner in my girlhood, and then 
 it was by far a worse form of drunkenness, due to the 
 bad whisky. Legislation has interfered with the manu- 
 facture of bad whisky. The blue-stone whisky, specially 
 manufactured for Fair days, which used to send the 
 men home maniacs, is gone or is less potent. Guinness's 
 stout, which is, or was, largely the drink of the Dublin 
 poor is an honest drink and a food as well. The judge 
 who took the merciful view that drunkenness, even when 
 it led to manslaughter, was the shortest way out of 
 Manchester, might excuse the alleged drinking of the 
 Dublin poor as being the shortest way out of slumdom. 
 
 Doubtless the life has its recompenses. One who had 
 risen out of it said : ' I was born in a tenement, and 
 upon my word there 's a good deal to be said for the 
 tenement. There 's great neighbourliness and there 's 
 great sociability. What we had we shared with each 
 other. Life was never duU.' 
 
 Some of these slum rooms, which are the drawing- 
 rooms of splendid old Georgian houses, the town- 
 houses of the Irish aristocracy before the Union made 
 absentees of them, are enormously large. It is said of 
 these that they accommodate four families, one in each 
 corner, and a lodger in the middle. A Dubhn architect 
 describing one of these rooms for me, added, ' And the four 
 famihes might Uve out of sight of each other so big is it.' 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE REBELLION 77 
 
 A man of genius who had been submerged talked of 
 those days. 
 
 ' I 'd slept for five nights in Stephen's Green,' he said, 
 ' and I used to sneak the bread the children flung to the 
 ducks. Sometimes I got in first and sometimes the 
 ducks were before me. There came a morning when I 
 was sitting in the sun, feeUng " happy but wake, like a 
 fly in December " as the saying is. There wasn't much 
 food in what bread I could get from the ducks. I hadn't 
 been lucky ; the ducks were getting up to my tricks. 
 Some one spoke to me, and when I looked up I saw a 
 man who owed me half a crown. He didn't look as 
 though he had half a crown about him, but he had, and 
 what 's more, he paid it like a decent man. I knew a 
 place where I 'd get a doss for one-and-six a week, and 
 I was tired of sleeping out in the cold, so I secured a 
 week's lodging. I lived for a week on the other shilling. 
 When it was gone I tried doing without food, and I kept 
 out of the landlady's way, for I didn't want to turn out 
 to sleep in the Green again. The doss was terrible. We 
 were lying, heads and tails, all over the place, and the 
 blankets — ^well, I '11 spare your feelings ; it was a con- 
 gested area, sure enough. I 'd come to the point of 
 thinking I 'd go out and find a blind beggar to rob, or a 
 little child going for her dada's porter with a couple 
 of pennies in her little fist, when the landlady came 
 looking for me. " Now," said I to myself, " here 's for 
 the road, and a tongue-lashing as well, for I 've cheated 
 her out of the price of the doss." No such thing ! 
 "Come in here," she says, taking me by the arm, " an' have 
 a bit with me and himself." My head reeled with joy 
 at the prospect, but I could hear a voice saying very far 
 away, " No, thanks, but I 'm grateful for your kindness 
 aU the same." " Come on," she says, " an' don't be so 
 proud." I 'd had time to feel the greatest terror lest 
 that dam fool who was talking somewhere far away 
 should be taken at his word ; so I went with the good 
 woman, and the sight of a big fat loaf on the table was 
 like Heaven. They kept me three months and never 
 
78 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 charged me a penny. It was a terrible place, sure 
 enough, but we were good to each other. If it was only 
 tuppence we had we shared it.' 
 
 Well, so much for the Dublin housing and the Dublin 
 poor. They were out in the great strike of 191 3. 
 Dublin slumdom, chronically on the edge of famine, was 
 pushed over. All the charitable agencies were at work. 
 The English Trades Unions sent over relief ships. The 
 Dublin bourgeoisie was very much up against Larkin. 
 The people did not complain at aU. A great crowd of 
 men stood aU day iii the wide space by the Custom 
 House, facing Liberty HaU, aU looking one way, waiting 
 for the oracle to speak. 
 
 Such a patient, quiet, well-mannered crowd ! One 
 felt ashamed to go down there, well fed and well clothed. 
 The men were paler and more haggard each time one 
 saw them. Sometimes you brushed up against them 
 in the street, carrying home the relief-potatoes in a 
 sack over their shoulders. People talked of menace, 
 but there was none; one only fancied a brooding terror 
 in those days. Perhaps, after all, as some one said, they 
 were being better fed than usual. 
 
 When you came among them they made way for you 
 to pass. The slightest hint of sympathy, and they 
 were all friendliness. Once, one of us asked a man of a 
 group in front of Liberty Hall, ' Is Larkin in the HaU ? ' 
 ' No, sir : Mr. Larkin isn't. Mr. ConnoUy is. Would 
 you like to see Mr. ConnoUy ? ' The whole group was 
 eager that we should see Mr. ConnoUy. Even the 
 emendation of the Mr. was not stressed. 
 
 One of us was too careful to see Mr. ConnoUy, and 
 for my part I have regretted it ever since. Larkin was 
 the meteor that flashed across the skies and leapt into 
 darkness. Behind him was a born leader of men, a most 
 extraordinary man, James ConnoUy. It is a loss not to 
 have known him. 
 
 Labour was beaten in the DubUn Strike of 191 3. 
 The RebeUion of 1916 was a counsel of despair. James 
 ConnoUy was its ' onlie begetter.' Something violent had 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE REBELLION 79 
 
 to be done, he felt, to win justice for the people, to draw 
 attention to their evil case, to frighten good comfortable 
 folk. So he began training the Citizen Army, never 
 putting more than two hundred men on the street at 
 one time, so that the police and authorities were deceived 
 as to the menace. He was far too clever a man to believe 
 in the success of his Rebellion. It was a means to shock 
 and frighten the indifferent world into heeding. The 
 preparations for the Rebellion were aU complete before 
 many of the Volunteer leaders knew what was afoot. 
 John M'Neill tried to stop it at the last moment, and 
 succeeded to some extent. O'Rahilly, a very fine and 
 gallant gentleman, rushed into Dublin with the same 
 purpose, and, finding it was too late, stood by the 
 others. A meeting of the Volunteer leaders to stop the 
 Rebellion was in session when some one rushed in with 
 the news that the Rebellion had broken out. One of 
 the leaders took his hat, and said : ' My boys are out 
 and my place is with them.' That is the genesis of the 
 Ehiblin Rebellion of 19 16. 
 
 These very men had cheered enthusiastically at a 
 recruiting meeting in Foster Place the tale of some 
 heroism of the Irish soldiers. Bitterness lay still beyond 
 Easter Week, 1916, and the regime of Sir John Maxwell. 
 
 But all that was still out of men's vision. During 
 those years our old friends. Count and Countess Plunkett, 
 often came to see us. He was one of my earliest friends, 
 one of the first to take me by the hand when I began to 
 write. About 1881-82 he edited an extremely cultivated 
 review, which he had called Hibernia. I have the two 
 tall thin volumes on my bookshelves. It was much 
 contributed to by Trinity College, over the way from 
 the editorial offices at 4 College Green. Jane Barlow 
 was contributing poems to Hibernia ten years before the 
 appearance of Bogland Studies. Dowden was among the 
 poets. Count Plunkett himself wrote delightful poems 
 which he left unsigned. It was oddly esoteric in the 
 violent days of the Land League, and, too soon, it died. 
 
 Count Plunkett was the gentlest of men, with a streak 
 
8o THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 of the fighter in him. A representative Catholic, he yet 
 fought the priests in the matter of Mr. Parnell's leader- 
 ship, and stood by the Chief in those last great days as 
 he had not when the cause was triumphant. 
 
 The last man one would have said to have violent and 
 bloody days in his future. The gentlest of the gentle, 
 very good and devoted to good works, with a wife who 
 was entirely ii^ sympathy with him : a cultivated man, 
 loving learning and the arts. X)ne would have prog- 
 nosticated for these two the smoothest pathway through 
 life, and ' an old age serene and bright.' 
 
 Oddly enough, when the Strike leaders made their 
 one fatal mistake, which brought them up against the 
 great force of the Catholic Church in Dublin, i.e. their 
 plan for sending the children of the strikers to homes to 
 be provided for them by the English Trades Unions, 
 Countess Plunkett was among those who opened homes 
 for the children in Dublin, so frustrating Larkin's plans. 
 For that reason, and for her alleged ownership of slum 
 dwellings, she was the object of Larkin's violent de- 
 nunciations. Another curious thing to remember is that 
 she placed a house at the disposal of the Com- 
 mittee, under Lady Aberdeen's presidency, which 
 was starting clubs for soldiers' wives in the early 
 days of the war. But, as I have said, the bitterness 
 was not yet. 
 
 One day of that summer we drove up to a house which, 
 I always said, had the Sugar Loaf in its back garden, the 
 Sugar Loaves being the two beautiful peaks which rise 
 up over Bray. The old Irish called them the Golden 
 Spears : I do not know who was responsible for the 
 grocery appellation. There at tea we met Joseph 
 Plunkett, whom I had last seen as a baby seated on die 
 carpet with his elementary toys around him. He was 
 now a tall, fair, delicate youtii, with something misty 
 about him, very full of theories and with a somewhat 
 opinionated air. He had a very young manner of having 
 threshed everything out and settled it before you were 
 born. If one had known that the greatest of all experi- 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE REBELLION 81 
 
 ences awaited him, that he was one of the predestined, 
 one might have understood better and been more 
 patient. 
 
 Another day I went to tea with Miss Winifred Letts, 
 to meet Thomas MacDonagh and his wife. They came 
 late and I left early to catch a train, and it was dusk of 
 a winter afternoon, so that I carried away only the im- 
 pression of an eager, friendly young man's face under 
 clustering curls. I wish I had not been so careful in 
 seeking my train that winter afternoon. 
 
 Again we met the Sheehy Skeffingtons at Padraic 
 Colum's house, and liked them. ' Skeffy,' as the Dublin 
 crowd called him, laughing at him with affection, was 
 the bravest of men. He was a pacifist and a suffragist 
 — ^aU manner of ' ists,' — but an entirely lovable per- 
 sonality. I like his brother-in-law Tom Kettle's tribute 
 to him : 
 
 ' He was to me the good comrade of many hopes, and, 
 though the ways of this scurvy and disastrous world led 
 us apart, he remains to me an inextinguishable flame. 
 This " agitator," this " public menace," this " dis- 
 turber," was wholly emancipated from egotism and 
 incapable of personal hatred. He was a man who had 
 ranged the whole world of ideas. Strangest of all, he, 
 who turned away from soldiers, left to all soldiers an 
 example of courage in death to which there are not many 
 parallels. This brave and honourable man died to the 
 rattle of musketry. His name will be recalled to the 
 ruffle of drums.' 
 
 The manner of Sheehy Skeffington's death was a most 
 terrible blow to Tom Kettle, who was then just on the 
 eve of his departure for France. He offered, Mrs. Kettle 
 told me, if Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington wished it, to take 
 off his uniform, but ' my sister would not accept such 
 a sacrifice.' She told me further that her sister did not 
 wish Captain Colthurst to be punished, recognising that 
 he was not responsible ; that she strongly disapproved 
 of the manner of cross-examination of the young officers, 
 who were entirely in the hands of their superior officers ; 
 
 F 
 
82 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 that a statement oi hers entirely exonerated Captain 
 Morgan of the Irish Rifles. 
 
 ' Ships that pass in the night.' When the immense 
 fragedy of Sheehy SkefHngton's death came one wished 
 that one had not passed so easily ' this brave and honour- 
 able man.' There was a Sunday when he and his wife 
 and child walked down our road to the sea. We might 
 have intercepfcd them, given them tea and a handshake, 
 if we had only known the tragedy to which their feet 
 walked. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS 
 
 A. E. was one of the prophets of the Great Strike. 
 He went over to a meeting at the Albert Hall and de- 
 livered a passionate speech in favour of the workers, 
 slogging about him with characteristic vehemence when 
 this mildest of men is aroused in his sympathies for the 
 poor and oppressed. Probably he was less than just to 
 the priests who resisted the deportation of the children 
 to England, and he got into some trouble with the 
 Co-operative Societies. But it passed. Every one knew 
 his heart was all right. If not universally accepted in 
 Ireland — ^let us be cautious : there is the north-east 
 corner to be considered — I think he is the man who 
 comes nearest to being universally accepted. One feels 
 inclined to say of him as Lord Henry Fitzgerald said of 
 Lord Edward, ' Dear fellow, he is perfect ! ' 
 
 That burning speech in the Albert Hall gave great 
 comfort to our English man-servant, whose long term 
 with us was now, alas, drawing to a close. He had 
 suffered greatly from our Bohemian guests, who came to 
 dinner in their ordinarv clothes. He was rather bitter 
 about it, recalling past glories when he had ' exceeded,' 
 which became increasingly often. That one of our 
 guests should have been heard at the Albert Hall and 
 reported in the Sunday papers, rehabilitated them and 
 us in his estimation. 
 
 I have written of the people who counted most in our 
 life at Shankill, but there were others who counted for kind- 
 ness and companionship during those three good years 
 before we went into the wilderness. When we took our 
 
§4 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 walks abroad we were always meeting friends who went 
 a bit of the way with us. There was the Judge, a 
 beautiful person to look at, with his silver hair, his fine 
 face, and stateliness of bearing. His brother, Lord Ash- 
 bourne, was called ' the silver-tongued.' I am sure the 
 Judge had a golden voice, and he was thoroughly well 
 read — he was one of those nice people who bought every 
 book I produced and would not take one for a present, 
 much less offer the poor author the last insult of borrow- 
 ing her own books from her. (Let this not be taken as 
 applying to those to whom she ojfers to lend !) We used 
 to meet him on our walks, and he would walk back vsith 
 us and stand at the gate talking till we were all late for 
 lunch. We never could induce him to come in and 
 share ours. I beHeve he was the most receptive person 
 aHve ; but he must have told us very little, since, except 
 an impression of Mr. Pamell, with whom he had been in 
 Parhament, I cannot remember any statement of his; 
 yet we were surely walking and taMng with the delight 
 of people who find the same tastes and interests in each 
 other. The impression was, briefly : 
 
 ' I only saw him in his exterior aspect during the 
 sessions of 1886-87, in political conflict, and I never 
 exchanged words vrith him in the lobbies. He only 
 turned up for important debates when he would deUver 
 a carefully prepared speech. He was not fluent, but 
 Mr. Gladstone, I think, paid him the compliment that 
 his language exactly fitted his thought, and that he did 
 not say more than he meant. In apparently uncertain 
 health he spoke with dignity and force, never stooping 
 10 personaUties or discourtesy.' 
 
 The Judge's brother, the Captain, was a most deUghtful 
 Old Boy. Only soldiers and sailors, and occasionally a 
 Catholic priest, especially of the monastic kind, remain 
 Old Boys to the end. I think it must be that the 
 barrack and the ship and the monastery are perpetual 
 schools, so that their inmates remain schoolboys, and 
 are beyond the isolation and the struggle with the world 
 of the ordinary man. 
 
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS 85 
 
 Captain Gibson was one of our very first visitors, and 
 he came with the most delightful intentions, for he 
 carried us off to a performance of massed bands at 
 Kingstown, and afterwards we had a glorious tea at the 
 Royal Yacht Club. He had fought in the Maori War, 
 and he used to tell us many cheerful stories of his pranks 
 when he was a young soldier. Still he got in all the 
 gaieties within reach, and went off to a Bournemouth 
 hotel every winter. He was always telling stories, and 
 they were somehow very like himself. Even when he 
 took to a bath-chair, Mrs. Gibson used to say to him, 
 when we met : ' Now what was that story you had to 
 tell Mrs. Hinkson ? ' and then the story would come. 
 One was of a neighbour of his in the Co. Tipperary, 
 who employed two men to saw wood. They used the 
 heavy old cross-cut saw, and they were very leisurely. 
 As the employer sat in his dining-room listening to the 
 song of the saw it seemed to him to be saying ' Beef an' 
 Cabbage : Fair an' Aisy. Beef an' Cabbage : Fair an' 
 Aisy.' He flung up the window in a great rage, and he 
 shouted to the men : ' It won't be Fair an' Aisy any 
 longer. I put you on piece-work from this minute.' 
 Then the song of the saw was changed. It went 
 ' Hands-Up ! Hands-Down ! Hands-Up ! Hands-Down ! ' 
 as quickly as possible ; and he listened, well contented. 
 
 Another story was of a certain Major K , a poor 
 
 man, who went to a shoot at a great house. The last 
 day of the shoot the head gamekeeper was being tipped 
 
 with five-pound notes, etc. Major K waited till 
 
 the last, when he pressed something into the haughty 
 functionary's hand, closing his fingers upon it whUe he 
 said : ' My poor fellow, others will give you gold and 
 notes ; but none will give you a more useful present than 
 mine.' It was a box of matches. 
 
 I told this story to Philip Hanson, who had been Mr. 
 Wyndham's private secretary. He said grimly : ' H'm ! 
 He wasn't going to shoot there again ' ; and went on to 
 tell me of a shoot on an English estate where, when the 
 beaters were slow in coming up to the guns, the squire 
 
86 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 peppered them in the legs with gunshot. Those were 
 feudal times. 
 
 Mrs. Gibson told me one day that when shje Uved in 
 the Co. Tipperary, ^he was obliged to give lip buying 
 Protestant chickens, they were so much more expensive 
 than Catholic ones. 
 
 There was a certain bit of Shankill which had half 
 a dozen red-brjck bungalows clustered together. My 
 children called it ' Proddy Shankill,' I suppose because the 
 little settlement had a genteelly Protestant look. A lady 
 who hved in one of the bungalows, who belonged to a 
 very Low Church Irish Protestant family, but did not 
 share the narrowness, implored the children almost with 
 tears to reconsider the name. She said it made her hate 
 her own house, and that she could not go on living there 
 unless they found another name. 
 
 We certainly had a very nice lot of neighbours. There 
 was a retired Indian Chnl Servant, with a vivacious wife 
 and pretty daughters, who lived in a most wonderful 
 house, designed and waU-painted by John Hungerford 
 Pollen. The bedrooms were all downstairs, and you 
 went up a flight of steps from the hall door without any 
 intervening hall to the drawing-room and dining-room, 
 painted with a History of Good Women or something 
 of the sort. As I was too blind to see the paintings I 
 have not remembered the subjects. The house was 
 Bavarian, I think, in its inspiration. There was a good 
 deal of German lettering about it, I seem to remember. 
 It had belonged to Judge Lawson, whose Ufe was in 
 great danger at one time from the Invincibles. Mrs. 
 Rowan Hamilton told me that at that time he used to go 
 home through her grounds avoiding the lonely private 
 road which led to his and one or two other houses. 
 We loved the vivacious lady of the house, to say nothing 
 of the two pretty daughters, whose oval faces became 
 their ear-rings, and the kind, gentle papa. One of the 
 other houses on that road had the most wonderful 
 collection of objets d'art. The papa there had a passion 
 for collecting. Every penny he could lay hands on went 
 
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS 87 
 
 to the collection. It overflowed : the house had no room 
 for it. You could not enter without knocking into some- 
 thing precious. The collector honoured me once, at 
 his kind daughter's request, by showing me some of the 
 gems of the collection. By the way he turned and said, 
 ' What ? ' very sharply when I spoke, I gathered that he 
 was not aware of me but only of the collection. 
 
 Some of the neighbours thought the money might 
 have been better expended. They said gloomily that 
 it would never come back. I heard the other day that 
 the first little lot, hardly to be missed, brought in ^^4000. 
 So was the collector justified. 
 
 One winter afternoon I went to see a very sweet 
 invalid lady with my Pamela. The dusk was already 
 in the house when we arrived, and the door was opened 
 to us by a young servant. It was a very old house, set 
 in a garden, with dim rooms, especially in the twilight. 
 We had our tea from cups of delicate egg-sheU china, 
 and we had a quiet gentle talk about books and children 
 and country things with the dear, little soft-voiced old 
 lady. 
 
 When we stood up to go, she said : 
 
 ' I wonder if you would mind meeting my brother. 
 He is . . . not exactly like other people. Something 
 happened when he was very little. He is quite 
 harmless.' 
 
 It was disquieting — -in the glimmering dusk — ^with 
 only an invalid lady and a child-servant. One did not 
 know what one might be going to see — ^an insane 
 person, something misshapen ; but I said, with a faint 
 cheerfulness, that of course I should be delighted. 
 
 Our hostess went out with us into the little haU. 
 She opened a door and called ' Peter ! ' Out came a 
 little figure running like a child. ' You wanted to See 
 Mrs. Hinkson, Peter.' The little figure bobbed like a 
 well-behaved child. ' I 've read Her Ladyship, Mrs. 
 Hinkson,' it said ; and then, as though overcome by 
 shyness and flying to some kind arms, it disappeared 
 again within the room. Five or six times the little 
 
88 JHE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 figure appeared, always running, each time naming 
 another book of mine before disappearing. It was such 
 a dear, little, polite, shy boy of seventy or so. 
 
 ' There now,' said our hostess as she opened the door 
 into the autumnal evening, ' Peter will be so pleased. 
 He has been longing to see you. He is so fond of your 
 books.' 
 
 Another day a fine motor appeared before our door, 
 the very finest and latest thing in motors, a sixty horse- 
 power Darracq. From the window a splendid-looking, 
 elderly gentleman looked out smiling. He was a neigh- 
 bour, unknown up to that time, who had come to take 
 me for a drive, because he had read my poetry and liked 
 it. I put on my hat : the nurse who was with him went 
 outside with the chauffeur, and off we flew up the 
 mountains. My new friend had a splendid torso — a. 
 highly-coloured, aquiline face ; very blue eyes ; a mag- 
 nificent beard ; waving grey hair. He was somewhat 
 like Sir Frederick Leighton as I remember him in a 
 long-dead summer, only much handsomer and with a 
 far more dominant face. Alas, the high colour and the 
 bright eyes were indicative of pain. He was almost help- 
 less from the waist downwards : but one coidd not have 
 believed that looking at him, with a flower in the lapel 
 of his velvet coat and a very fine cigar between his Hps. 
 He laughed and talked a good deal before he got tired. 
 One could see that the swift motor helped him to live 
 his crippled life, for he must have been a man of action. 
 We went up right over the mountains, swiftly and easily 
 in the powerful, luxurious car. He wanted to take me 
 up to Sally Gap at the highest point of the hills, but the 
 chauffeur demurred, saying the wind was too high up 
 there and would turn over the car. 
 
 After that first drive I had many, and paid many 
 visits to my new friend and his wife in their beautiful 
 house full of wonderful things ; a Gobelin tapestry of a 
 hunting scene on the walls ; Battersea enamel in candle- 
 sticks and boxes, not one or two pieces, but many ; the 
 piost precious things in silver and gold and china and 
 
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS 89 
 
 glass, including one of those French rarities of a gold 
 box from which springs a little golden bird and sings. 
 I used to visit my friend in his own room where he sat 
 by a generous fire, with the windows open, in his wheeled 
 chair, his helpless lower limbs hidden by a rug. The 
 room was full of the singing of birds and the scent of 
 flowers : and everywhere were mementoes of foreign 
 travel, Italian pictures on the walls, many beautiful 
 things, and the splendid old man in his chair as fine as 
 though a great Greek had chiselled him. 
 
 A touching thing was that I never saw him Hfted in 
 or out of his motor, for he had to be carried by men. 
 And, of course, it was incredible that he could be so old 
 —he was well up in the eighties, and the head and 
 shoulders were those of a hale man of sixty. 
 
 We had delightful drives together, but he goes no more 
 a-joy-riding in his Darracq, but trundles about in a 
 station-fly. The last time I saw him was in the splendid 
 summer of 1917. He sat in his chair laughing to see 
 my Pam smoke a cigarette, envying her her tolerant 
 mother. When he had seen the feat through he promptly 
 presented her with a Treasury bank-note which he must 
 have had for the purpose, for it lay on the little table 
 by his chair, crisp and new. 
 
 His dear old wife occasionally puts 'a tip ' into her 
 letters to me, as though I were a schoolboy. Perhaps 
 she does not know my reverend age ; perhaps thirty 
 years of difference seems like youth to her. One day 
 I woke up with an inordinate craving for a present, rail- 
 ing upon a stingy world. The morning post brought 
 me a tip from Mrs. K and a pair of silver candle- 
 sticks from Mrs. Rowan Hamilton, copied from those 
 which she had had made out of her ' marriage silver ' 
 seventy-two years before. 
 
 Then there was our friend in the big red-brick house 
 at the end of the road, just overlooking the sea. Once 
 I asked a friend of mine how she had come to know a 
 musician who went down in the Lusitania. ' Well,' she 
 said, with an air of preparing for a somewhat lengthy 
 
90 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 narrative, ' we were introduced through a cow.' Our 
 first introduction to the dear lady at the end of the road 
 was through a dog which had bitten one of us. He was 
 very old, and he was supposed to be toothless, but he 
 had bitten every one from behind ; and being Ireland 
 no one liked to say anything about it. Our complaint, 
 indeed, was received by a butler with stony contempt, and 
 by a coachman jvho tried to wheedle us into statements 
 which would knock the bottom out of our case. Getting 
 no more than that, on a chance encounter with a very 
 pretty girl, behind whose skirts we could see the black- 
 avised villain who had damaged so many legs, we made 
 bur complaint anew. 
 
 ' Mother will be so sorry,' she said, and then looked 
 at the sneaking rascal with a fond eye. ' Not that the 
 poor dear could do any harm : he is perfectly toothless.' 
 
 We didn't like to say that he had some teeth and they 
 met. But a few days later the dear, soft, kind mother 
 came to call, and that was the beginning of another 
 friendship. Now the pretty daughters are married, and 
 the soldier son is at the war, and our dear neighbour 
 sits in perpetual darkness in the kindly old house. 
 
 It was a very good time, but already the shadows were 
 creeping over the dial. There had been the defeated 
 DubHn strike, and the Ulster Volunteers had been formed 
 to resist the ridiculous Home Rule BiU which pleased 
 nobody. In the autumn of 191 3 I went to stay with 
 my friends, Mr. Justice and Mrs. Ross, at their place in 
 Tyrone. And one day as we were motoring we met an 
 Ulster Volunteer, cycling, with his rifle on his back. 
 That month saw the great review of Ulster Volunteers at 
 Baronscourt, the Duke of Abercorn's place. My hostess 
 kindly tried to arrange for my seeing the armed camp 
 there, but we were just too late. I was not sorr)^ 
 My Celtic and CathoUc gorge would have risen at it. 
 
 In the following month the Irish Volunteer Movement 
 began, as might have been expected. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 HUMOURS AND EXPERIENCES 
 
 One of those days John Muldoon, a ' Party ' man whom 
 we liked much, came to see us and presented me with 
 an election address which is worth keeping. 
 
 EAST GALWAY VACANCY 
 
 Candidate. — M. G. Mullins, J.P., Loughrea. An Evicted Tenant 
 on the Clanricarde Estate, who has applied to the Land 
 Commission to have his Holding restored to him. 
 
 Mullins will sit, act, and vote with the Party of which Mr. 
 John Redmond, M.P., is Leader. 
 
 Mullins will take up the Banner that fell from the hands of 
 Honest John Roche who lived and died fighting the Evicted 
 Tenant's Cause. 
 
 Mrs. Mullins is First Cousin of John Roche's Brother-in-Law. 
 
 Mullins is a subscriber to the Volunteer and Parliamentary 
 Funds. 
 
 Mullins will look after the interest of every man in East 
 Galway who has a grievance. 
 
 Mullins is the man that knows what to say, how to say it, 
 and when to say it. He is a true Home Ruler, a Nationalist and 
 a Patriot to the back-bone. He belongs to the ' Clan O'Mullen 
 of Connacht ' who are descended from Diarmuid Fionn, the 
 13th King of Connacht. 
 
 Mullins was the first person that proposed the concrete 
 footpath from Hall's to the West Bridge. 
 
 Mullins was the man that proposed the Duplex Lighting of 
 the Town Lamps. 
 
 Mullins was the man that proposed the Lamps should be 
 left lighting aU night on Fair eves. 
 
 Mullins was the Person that got the Fair Green cleared£of 
 mud and loose stones. 
 
 91 
 
92 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 MuLLiNs was the man tliat fought to have the Washings of the 
 Fever Hospital diverted from the Waters of the Lake. The 
 Local Government Board Inspectors said it would not do much 
 harm to the water. 
 
 MuLLiNS protested and said : ' We want it to do no harm : 
 away with it, buiy it.' 
 
 MuLLiNS was the man that requisitioned the watering-cart to 
 sprinkle the streets at the April Fair, when all business was 
 practically suspeSded through the bUnding dust that swept 
 through the thoroughfare like the sands of the Sirocco. . 
 
 MuLLiNS is the fighting chief that enacted the bye-laws at the 
 Potato Market, giving the man that arrives at eleven the same 
 facilities for weighing his load as the person who was on the 
 spot at the peep of dawn. 
 
 Greatly to the loss of the House of Commons, but 
 doubtless greatly to the advantage of the citizens of 
 Loughrea, Mullins was not elected. 
 
 John Muldoon had just come back from a fiercely con- 
 tested Limerick election. His statement at a meeting 
 that the Party Candidate was a Co. Limerick man was 
 contravened by a priest who was on the other side. ' If 
 he 's a Limerick man at all, he was bom in a very small 
 part of it.' ' You wouldn't want the man to be born 
 all over the place,' roared John Muldoon. 
 
 One of those Sundays Sir David told us a story of an 
 occasion when, as an Assistant Commissioner of PoHce, 
 he had a car-driver before him on the complaint of an old 
 lady that he had been insulting to her, that he had de- 
 manded more than his legal fare, finally that he had 
 dawdled on the way for the purpose of annoying her. 
 It should be explained that the legal fare for a Dublin 
 hackney car within the city boundaries was sixpence, and 
 many Dublin stories turn on the wrangles between the 
 drivers and those who stuck to the letter of the law. At 
 the third accusation, the ' jarvey ' rose. ' That 's not 
 true, anyway,' he said, ' for I 'd drive like hell to get rid 
 of her.' Sir David added that he told this story to Lord 
 Spencer, the then Viceroy, who was a very solemn 
 person, and, for once, he smiled. 
 
HUMOURS AND EXPERIENCES 93 
 
 A friend we saw much of in the last few years remaining 
 to him was Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, our friend of many 
 years, who had humanities beyond the common in a 
 college don. The famous classical scholar and fine wit 
 had most gracious manners, with a delicious way of being 
 lurid in speech if anything or any one displeased in a very 
 slow, quiet voice, soft as velvet. Let me pay tribute to 
 him and to Mrs. Tyrrell, to whom Heart of a Girl would 
 most fittingly rhyme, and the warm hospitality of their 
 house. Some few and blessed women have the gift of 
 making home wherever they are. Mrs. Tyrrell had it, 
 has it, to perfection ; and he was a most urbane and 
 charming host. Just to think of the days and the 
 evenings when we went up to lunch or to dine with the 
 Tyrrells, and the warm, friendly house folded us in, is a 
 delight in retrospect. ' Alas,' as Wesley said, of the 
 glories of a great Irish house where he visited, ' that 
 all this must vanish like a dream ! ' Certainly the 
 gracious Irish hospitality is passing. There are not 
 many houses like the Tyrrells' now. The late Lord 
 Grey's daughter has made a happy summing-up phrase 
 of a most gracious personality and good man. ' He was 
 always lighting fires in cold rooms.' Blessed be the 
 women like Ada Tyrrell, like Mary Gill, and others I have 
 known, who create about their personality a warm room 
 for the cold to come into and be made glad ! 
 
 One day in the train some one told me that Mrs. 
 Rowan Hamilton, who had just been on a visit to Lady 
 Dufferin, had absolutely refused to eat the nice, light, 
 digestible food prepared for her. She would eat curried 
 lobster instead. ' Oh, go and teach your grandmother 
 to suck eggs ! ' she said impatiently to some one who 
 protested. 
 
 Occasionally we used to go to the very good concerts 
 provided by Sir Stanley Cochrane at Woodbrook, Bray. 
 Sometimes John Coates was of the singers and he would 
 come over to us at Shankill afterwards and sing for us, 
 song after song. He was an old London friend of my 
 husband's, but my first meeting with him was, I think, in 
 
94- THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 May 19 1 3, when he and I and others were entertained by 
 that very hospitable DubUn Club, the Corinthians. I 
 had to go alone, since my husband had just lost a relative, 
 and I was feeling rather strange when John Coates was 
 brought up to me. ' I 'm all alone,' I said desolately. 
 ' Oh no,' he said, ' never alone while you 've got me ! ' 
 
 Are Yorkshiremen very like Irishmen ? He is. He 
 sang us the Irish songs — ' At the Mid Hour of Night,' I 
 remember particularly — with the most passionate feeUng. 
 Unlike many singers he always has the feeUng for the 
 words, true artist that he is. He told us once that 
 when he was a little boy and was very often brought 
 forward to sing, his old aunt used to whisper to him : 
 'Be sure to read the words first, Johnny. Always read 
 the words first.' He has profited by that excellent 
 advice. He is just as fine a man as he is a singer, and 
 that is to say a good deal. The last time I saw him he 
 was in khaki which became him, and was using his 
 beautiful voice in bidding men ' Form Fours ! ' 
 
 At one of those concerts, which were very pleasant 
 social affairs — you could get tea in the hall and talk to all 
 your friends — I met Emily Lawless's brother, a very 
 gentle, refined-looking, elderly man. It was just after 
 Miss Lawless's death. He told me she had died in her 
 sleep. The maid, entering her room in the morning 
 and drawing up the bhnd, was struck by the rigidity 
 of the sleeper, and approaching found her dead, wearing 
 the utmost placidity of countenance. He spoke of her 
 as ' my dear ' and ' my dear one.' It was pleasant to 
 know that she was so much loved. 
 
 One of the evenings A. E. dined with us he was 
 fascinated, in his big, gentle way, by our tiny chocolate 
 Pom, ' Fritz,' who has obstinately refused to answer to 
 ' Fred,' or ' Frederick.' He said in a fantastic mood 
 that Fritz was a wonderful little creature who ran about 
 in splendid boughs in a magical forest. Pamela, who is 
 the ' mother ' of Fritz, said, ' You know the secrets of 
 animals. What does he think of us ? ' A. E. answered : 
 ' He thinks we are all his gigantic slaves.' 
 
HUMOURS AND EXPERIENCES 95 
 
 When we went to Dublin we used to go to see A. E. 
 and Susan Mitchell in the big room at the top of 
 Plunkett House, with the wall-paintings. I remember 
 how, long ago in his boyhood, A. E. had painted with such 
 mystical beings the walls and ceiling of the Theosophical 
 Society's rooms in Ely Place. What became of them ? 
 Does some one live amid their beauty and glitter, or have 
 they peeled away like the Pre-Raphaelite decorations of 
 the Union Rooms at Oxford, for want of a little care in ' 
 preparing the walls ? A. E. said his main reason for 
 painting the walls was because he could not live with the 
 ugly wall-paper. He is always painting out and re- 
 painting those lovely visions. He said to me one of 
 those days : ' There are people born to do things, who 
 would have done them under any circumstances. The 
 man who wrote the Jungle Book, if he had been an 
 Eastern, would have sat in the gates of Baghdad and told 
 stories. I would have sat in the gates and made pictures. 
 You would have made poems. There are other people 
 who only do things because of their environment.' 
 
 The teas at Plunkett House were always a pleasant 
 occasion. All the staff was to be found there, with 
 visitors thrown in ; and the most delicious Co-operative 
 honey and cream and butter made the entertainment 
 particularly good. But sometimes if the Homestead 
 was late or difficult the editor had his tea upstairs. I 
 found him once boiling water in a saucepan for his tea ; 
 and when I went shopping I sent him a kettle, without 
 giving any indication of where it came from. On my 
 next visit, in the midst of conversation, A. E. suddenly 
 disappeared into a cupboard, from which presently he 
 emerged with the kettle in his hand. He said nothing, 
 only beamed at me over his beard, then looked down at 
 the kettle with a question in his eyes. 
 
 Another day, much later, my Pam and Patrick were 
 with A. E. when a gentleman arrived to whom, as a 
 reviewer, I had given some hard smacks, which he had 
 repaid in kind. Dear A. E. with his air of benediction 
 waved the two youngsters towards the unfriendly 
 
96 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 arrival. ' These are Katharine Tynan's son , and 
 daughter,' he said, in his beautiful way of taking for 
 graiited that the introduction must be of interest and 
 pleasure. The young people were getting off the scene 
 at the moment, and I am quite sure that A. E. was and 
 is blissfully unaware of any awkwardness. 
 
 All sorts of interesting people come into that room all 
 day and every day. They are bidden enter by A. E. 
 with a big benevolent roar. He gives audience all day 
 long ; American editors and readers, young Uterary men 
 and poets; agricultural experts, men of action of one 
 kind or another, politicians, lords, ladies, priests, and 
 parsons come up those stairs. The last time I was 
 there one of the most beautiful old men in the world 
 came in ' to give A. E. my blessing and to ask his.' 
 His only son had been killed at Suvla Bay. He has said 
 the finest thing I know of all the splendid sayings of 
 the war : ' When my son sits down in Paradise I pray 
 that the Turk who kiUed him may sit down beside him.' 
 One might well kneel to receive his blessing ; and A. E.'s 
 would be good to have, but his face always radiates 
 blessing. That day this beautiful old man, after he had 
 been gone five minutes, came climbing the steep stairs 
 again, with a message to our elder boy, who had been 
 recommended for the Military Cross. ' Tell him,' he 
 said, with his hand on my shoulder, ' that I am as proud 
 of him as though he were my owa. boy, my own boy.^ 
 
 Many a young soldier came for A. E.'s blessing, diough 
 he is no militarist. He told me that he had never killed 
 anything but a fish, once. He had not gone fishing 
 again. Even yet, he said, the thought of the white belly 
 turning upward had power to fill him vnth a queer 
 horror. 
 
 I have never been in London, except once passing 
 through when I saw no one, since we left it behind in 
 December 1911. But I have kept touch through my letters 
 and made new friends. My visit to Mr. Justice and Mrs. 
 Ross in 191 3 brought me into touch with Rose Macaulay 
 who had been visiting them. Mr. Justice Ross lent me 
 
HUMOURS AND EXPERIENCES 97 
 
 her novel The Lee Shore, which had won the Thousand 
 Guineas Prize in a Hodder and Stoughton competition. 
 I must confess that I took the book with no great antici- 
 pations. I had an unfounded suspicion that a Prize 
 Novel could not be a good novel from a literary point of 
 view. The fact that a novel of my own, MoUy My 
 Hearths Delight — a. somewhat painstaking study of Mrs. 
 Delany and her times, not, I think, to be ranked among 
 my ephemerae — ^had not passed the weeder-out, did not 
 influence my judgment, I think. Ever since The Lee 
 Shore I have been making my apologies to the distin- 
 guished literary men who sat in judgment. Anything 
 more iinlike The Way of an Eagle or The Rosary than The 
 Lee Shore cannot well be imagined. This delicate, 
 humorous, gently satiric, tender book, like the others of 
 Miss Macaulay's making, stands out as something most 
 satisfying to the literary sense. These books say to the 
 understanding mind, as Coleridge said to Wordsworth 
 (or was it the other way about ?), ' Let us stand aside 
 while this crowd goes by.' I wrote to Miss Macaulay 
 to tell her how I loved The Lee Shore, and established a 
 friendship with her which is added to by my friendship 
 with her creatures. The Crevequers — ^those fascinating 
 vagabonds who crop up again and again in Miss 
 Macaulay's books — Peter of The Lee Shore, Benjy of 
 Views and. Vagabonds, all the other sweet, impracticable, 
 humorous, delightful creatures walk the world with me 
 since I have met them. 
 
 Another new friend of mine during those years was also 
 a Prize Novel winner, with The House of Lisronan, Miss 
 Miriam Alexander. I had not read the House, but I had 
 read its successor. The Port of Dreams, and been greatly 
 struck by it. Miss Alexander, now Mrs. Harold Stokes, 
 Uved in that bit of country lying under the Dublin 
 mountains which was my girlhood's home and my Port 
 of Dreams, every inch of it consecrated in my thoughts. 
 She gave me tea one day at the Alexandra Club. While 
 I waited for her — one always had to wait for her — I 
 heard the conversation about me and thought it indi- 
 
98 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 cated a nest of Unionist ladies, rooted in their convic- 
 tions as only Irish Unionist ladies can be. If such are 
 torn up by the roots and become Nationalists they are 
 very extreme, as converts are apt to be. Miriam was 
 then a little rebel in the sense that Jane Barlow and 
 Emily Lawless were rebels. I have not seen her since 
 rebellion took shape as a definite thing. It became her, 
 as anything must become ' a dainty rogue in porcelain.' 
 Even the Unionist ladies might have felt that 
 
 ' If to her share some rebel errors fall. 
 Look in her face and you forget them all.' 
 
 In those years I somehow lost Jane Barlow who had 
 been my constant friend and correspondent for nearly 
 twenty years. When we visited Ireland one of our first 
 visits was always to her : our sympathies had been 
 constant. She had always known about us, our children, 
 our dogs, our gardens — how many cuttings and plants 
 from the Cottage, Raheny, linger yet in the gardens of 
 our various domiciles ? — our griefs and joys. She once 
 sent me pansies to cover a baby's grave. ' They are 
 the most faithful of all the flowers,' she wrote. My first 
 attempt to see her after we came back failed because of 
 her father's serious iUness. AU of her that had been left 
 by her mother's death in 1893 was absorbed in him. I 
 had always known that when he died her life would be 
 snapt off, although she might Unger for a while. After 
 his death she made no sign. I hardly expected it : I 
 had known she would be struck down. Not long after- 
 wards I heard she had come to Uve at Bray some four 
 miles off. Still she made no sign, although I sent her 
 messages. Later a chance meeting at a tea-party given 
 by Miss Winifred Letts afforded me, I thought, the 
 clue. I went up to Jane Barlow with warm pleasure in 
 seeing her again. She was a little chiUy. After a sen- 
 tence or two she mentioned that she had found a want 
 of reticence displeasing to her in my Twenty-Five Years, 
 which had just been published. It was very unlike the 
 Jane Barlow whose simple unselfconsciousness I had 
 
HUMOURS AND EXPERIENCEvS 99 
 
 admired when she gave me all I wanted about herself in 
 the old days of ' Interviewing.' I never knew what had 
 displeased her. The reference to herself was of the 
 slightest. 
 
 Alas ! We never met again, although for a year and 
 a half after that we were neighbours. I wrote when I 
 heard of her iUness, but she was beyond answering me. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE BEST OF FRIENDS 
 
 I HAVE purposely abstained from speaking of two whose 
 influence in our lives was potent in those years, because 
 I wanted to draw things together, and hitherto I have 
 been very desultory, ranging over many people and 
 happenings. 
 
 A year or two or three before we came back to Ireland 
 I had had an invitation to a dinner which the Dublin 
 Corinthian Club was giving to Irish women-writers. 
 Unfortunately I was not able to accept that invitation, 
 and so missed some of my sisters — a. lost opportunity I 
 shall always grieve for in the case of Martin Ross. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen, the then Viceroy, presided at the 
 dinner, and Father Russell wrote to me a httle later 
 that he had learnt from Lady Gilbert, the friend of my 
 early days, who had sat beside Lord Aberdeen at dinner, 
 that His Excellency had displayed a most flattering 
 interest in me. I had met Lady Aberdeen many years 
 earlier, and had occasionally corresponded with her, but 
 had never met Lord Aberdeen. When I saw Lady 
 Gilbert she corroborated. She said, among other things, 
 that when a speaker made a reference to some Irish 
 writer who ought to be there, with complimentary intent. 
 Lord Aberdeen always said : ' Now he means Kate 
 Tynan.' His calling me ' Kate ' was odd, for my father 
 was the only one who ever did that. 
 
 I attached no significance to the report, thinking that 
 it was perhaps a little overstated, out of the wish to 
 please. However, it was quite, and fortunately, true 
 that, as in the case of Lady Harrel, Lord Aberdeen had 
 
THE BEST OF FRIENDS loi 
 
 a kindness for me before we met, only in his case there 
 was the reason that he Hked something of my writing. 
 
 Lord and Lady Aberdeen had been in Dublin in 1886 
 for a very brief Viceroyalty during the months before 
 Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill was defeated and the 
 Liberal administration fell with it. Lady Aberdeen had 
 flung herself while she stayed, with characteristic and 
 joyful energy, into social work, the Irish industrieSj work 
 among the poor, and all such doings. They won the 
 hearts of the people at all events, and they went out 
 amid such manifestations of popular affection as had not 
 happened since the departure of Lord Fitzwilliam, with 
 the broken Charter of the Catholics in his hands, a 
 hundred years earlier. 
 
 During the intervening twenty years, which covered 
 a Viceroyalty in Canada, the memory of that send-off and 
 the affection and admiration of the Irish people remained 
 green with liord and Lady Aberdeen. Lady Aberdeen 
 had kept in touch with the Irish industries, revisiting 
 Ireland at intervals during that time till, finally, they 
 came back to the Viceregal Lodge in 1906, full of all 
 sorts of plans for the benefit of the people they had 
 learned to love. 
 
 A good deal of water had flowed under the bridges 
 since 1886. The bonnie children who had won the 
 praise and blessings of the crowd on that first coming 
 had grown to manhood and womanhood. Youth, as a 
 matter of years had passed by, but no boy and girl could 
 have come with more eager hopefulness and young 
 courage to the task of setting crooked things straight, 
 than the new Viceroy and Lady Aberdeen. 
 
 Let me describe Lord Aberdeen briefly, as one who 
 knows him intimately and honours and admires his 
 beautiful character. He is the finest of fine gentlemen ; 
 perhaps almost too fine for the rough and tumble of life, 
 certainly too clean, too high-minded for the unclean 
 game of poHtics. He had sat at the feet of Mr. Gladstone 
 who was his political idol. No one can say, even his 
 enemies, that Gladstone did not play the game with 
 
I02 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 immense dignity. I remember once, at the Viceregal 
 luncheon-table, I quoted Mr. Garvin : ' When Glad- 
 stone is remembered as a splendid commonplace, Parnell's 
 star will be growing brighter and brighter.' There was 
 a gasp when I had said it. No one spoke. All eyes 
 looked on their plates. ' WeU,' I said, ' / didn't say it ; 
 it was Mr. Garvin.' Then every one laughed, including 
 Lord and Lacfy Aberdeen, and the tension was ended. 
 
 From my first meeting with Lord Aberdeen in April 
 191 2, shortly after our coming back, when we were bidden 
 to an evening-party at Dublin Castle, he honoured me 
 with his warm friendship, and I can honestly say that 
 during this friendship, kept up by correspondence in 
 absence, I have found no fault in him. He ought to 
 have been the most poptdar of Irish Viceroys. His 
 beautiful manners, his fine courtesy, his gracious ways, 
 his gentle heart, might be taken for granted. What was 
 not so much in evidence was what appeals to the Irish, 
 for example, his skill with horses, a thing the DubUn 
 crowd would have adored. 
 
 There was a time, while we lived in England, when 
 the Saturday Westminster was giving a number of actual 
 experiences of some kind or other. Our attention was 
 arrested by a story of 1 867, about the time the Fenians had 
 attacked Chester Castle, when Mr. Gladstone had left 
 Hawarden one night to visit the house of — was it the 
 Marquis of Westminster — or the Earl of Crewe ? — ^I have 
 forgotten; but it was one of the great Liberd persons. 
 Every one was very anxious about the journey except 
 Mr. Gladstone. Even Mrs. Gladstone did not suggest 
 that it should not be undertaken. At the last moment 
 there was a new cause for anxiety. The trusted coach- 
 man, who had so often driven Caesar and all his fortunes, 
 was suddenly taken iU. Mr. Gladstone was not apprised 
 of the fact lest it should disturb him. I am not sure now 
 that he was not to address a great political meeting after 
 dinner. It was a dark night, but the journey was made 
 in perfect safety, the ' pair ' not seeming aware that a 
 new hand was upon the reins. No Fenians appeared, 
 
THE BEST OF FRIENDS 103 
 
 but the lackeys at the brilliantly ht doors of the great 
 house were amazed to see Mr. W. H. Gladstone, who 
 had occupied the box seat with the coachman, wait 
 after his father and mother had entered for a whispered 
 word and a warm handshake with the new coachman, 
 .who was no other than Mr. John Campbell Gordon, later 
 to be Earl and Marquess of Aberdeen. Mr. Gladstone 
 was not aware till the whole thing was safely over, when 
 Mrs. Gladstone informed him of the identity of his very 
 capable driver, who was then just twenty years of age. 
 
 It was Mrs. Drew who supplied this reminiscence, I 
 believe. We were the first to tell Lord Aberdeen of its 
 appearance in print. 
 
 The Dublin crowd, and Irishmen generally, are very 
 susceptible to a gift of handling horses. One of Lord 
 Aberdeen's A.D.C.'s, devoted to him as aU his household 
 was, lamented to us that he did not oftener display these 
 special gifts. This A.D.C., Captain Hope, a tall, fair 
 young officer of the Irish Guards, told us how, on the 
 occasion of the International Football Match between 
 Ireland and Scotland, which draws an enormous crowd, 
 Lord Aberdeen arrived at the Lansdowne Road grounds 
 himself driving a pair. There was a very narrow 
 entrance-gate to be negotiated, barely an inch to spare 
 at either side. The crowd watched with breathless 
 interest. As the difficult feat was accomplished a great 
 roar of applause went up. ' I wish he would do it 
 oftener,' Captain Hope said, with a pucker of his candid 
 forehead. 
 
 I repeated this to Lord Aberdeen, and he said : ' One 
 of these days I will drive you out with the pair.' But 
 that never came off. 
 
 Lady Aberdeen has remained incurably young and 
 optimistic. She came back to Ireland with the gracious 
 and generous intention not only of working for the 
 people, but of reconciling conflicting forces and healing 
 animosities. She has a heart for any fate. Possessing 
 great personal fascination and unbounded courage and 
 hopefulness, she did not despair of, she was rather 
 
I04 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 optimistic about, reconciling the irreconcilables. On 
 the one hand she gathered about her the Catholics and 
 Nationalists, often with a democratic ignoring of classes. 
 In these countries it is very hard to find the true spirit of 
 Democracy which so abounds in France. Lady Aber- 
 deen, a woman of rank herself, came very near to 
 being the true Democrat, oiUy — ^I don't think people 
 would presume* on the democratic spirit too much, for 
 she is grande dame to even the most careless eye. Some 
 one described her to me once as an autocrat-democrat, 
 and I thought it a very just description. 
 
 On the other hand, she strove to win the Unionist 
 ladies, who looked very much askance at the Home Rule 
 Viceroy and his Consort. To Lady Aberdeen's lovers, 
 of whom I am one, there must be always something 
 poignant in the faith and hope, the young confidence, 
 with which she came to an impossible task. 
 
 In the case of Lord Aberdeen I think he must have 
 won any one who came near enough to him. He has 
 the ideal quahties. It was once said to me : ' If he has 
 a fault it is that he gives himself up too much to the 
 finer emotions.' People said when he did simple and 
 charming things, that he should remember he repre- 
 sented the King. It was not easy for him to remember 
 the obligation, which some Viceroys have observed in the 
 letter rather than the spirit, when it was a question of 
 courtesy to a woman or gentleness to a child. I remem- 
 ber once when an inconsiderate girl-guest at the Vice- 
 regal Lodge discovered at the last moment, with the 
 motor standing at the door and not a seat to spare, that 
 she must really change her mind and go into Dublin. 
 Lord Aberdeen immediately gave up his seat to her and 
 took the seat beside the chauffeur, which would, of course, 
 have horrified the sticklers for royal etiquette. 
 
 I remember a very cold night too, when we went back 
 with him from a concert at the Royal Hospital to the 
 Viceregal Lodge, and stopped at the Kingsbridge 
 Station to set down there one of the performers. Lord 
 Aberdeen insisted on his taking the rug for his railway 
 
THE BEST OF FRIENDS 105 
 
 journey, although it left himself rugless. In the same 
 way he would wait on a woman, would step out of a 
 carriage or motor and help her to alight, saving her skirt 
 from the wheels — such little offices as perhaps a king 
 does not render a subject, but of the essence of kingli- 
 ness all the same. 
 
 There is a story told of an Irish viceroy who stood so 
 much on his dignity that he would not pick up a lady's 
 handkerchief when she dropped it. His very beautiful 
 young sister-in-law waited tiU she got him on the other 
 side of the Channel. Then she dropped many things 
 and insisted on his picking them up. ' You are not 
 Lord-Lieutenant here, you know ! ' she said triumphantly. 
 
 Well, it would have been impossible for Lord Aber- 
 deen to let a woman pick up her own handkerchief. 
 Attachment was very easy when one got near enough 
 to him. Deena Tyrrell said to me after a day when she 
 had lunched at the Viceregal Lodge — I think it must 
 have been the first occasion of her seeing Lord Aberdeen 
 at close quarters : ' He is so sweetly bent on making you 
 feel that there is no distance between you and him that 
 you feel it all the more.' It was eloquent from a Tyrrell 
 who was as far removed from undue humility as from 
 anything approaching snobbery. Lady Aberdeen also 
 had won Deena TyrreU's heart by the beauty and good- 
 ness of an address to her girl-guests at a May-Day 
 party. 
 
 Sometimes Lady Aberdeen had American visitors. I 
 think she was a little taken in by ' hustle ' and ' hot air.' 
 Anyhow, she has always been partial to America and 
 Americans, whose energy she greatly admires. Some of 
 the American visitors were a great trial to the most 
 hustling of the A.D.C.'s, a pink-cheeked, golden- 
 moustached young man whom some people found very 
 alarming. It was a cosmopolitan, very easy circle that 
 surrounded the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in those days, 
 for Lady Aberdeen's helpers and workers were to be 
 found side by side with aristocratic and distinguished 
 visitors. None, I think, ever presumed. The divinity 
 
io6 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 that doth hedge a king was very much to be felt in the 
 case of Lord and Lady Aberdeen, despite their simplicity 
 and friendliness. But some of the American and 
 Colonial ladies would not observe, perhaps did not know, 
 the etiquette. They would go out of the room before 
 Lady Aberdeen. They would omit the curtsy to the 
 Viceroy. It was really amusing to watch the nonchalant 
 air widi which some of these ladies, coming late to lunch 
 in defiance of all the laws, would receive the Viceroy's 
 amiable anxiety on their account. These lapses used 
 to cause the golden young A.D.C. untold anguish. He 
 was devoted to their Excellencies. I am sure he often 
 wanted to set the offenders right by pure force, and 
 would have done it if it were possible. , 
 
 Captain Hope — ^the first of the A.D.C.'s of those 
 years to be killed in the war — had, his mother wrote to 
 me afterwards, an unbounded admiration for the char- 
 acters of the lady and gentleman he served. His 
 desire was to model his life so far as possible on theirs, 
 and his simple dream was that he might some day write 
 a book in which their work and ideals should be set 
 forth to the world. 
 
 Lady Aberdeen was devoted to good works. The Irish 
 Celt usually dislikes and distrusts good works — he has 
 suffered so much from them at the hands of the Anglo- 
 Irish. It may have been diflicult for him to imagine 
 that there could be real sympathy for him apart from the 
 benevolence which so often desired to reform him and 
 lead him to better things, as the reformer saw them. In 
 the good works of the Anglo-Irish there lurks, or may 
 lurk, a core of controversy. A charity which should be 
 charity in its true sense, that is to say, Love and Love 
 alone, without design of teaching dieir recipient the 
 error of his ways, was something of a new thing in his 
 experience. The poor, at least, were soon persuaded 
 that here was love without controversy. 
 
 Lady Aberdeen lived in the midst of work for one 
 good cause or another. She took up a canlpaign against 
 consumption in Ireland. I see the fruits of it every day 
 
THE BEST OF FRIENDS 107 
 
 in this wild, western country, where the people live with 
 open windows despite the wind and the rain, because 
 Lady Aberdeen taught them to do it. Another crusade 
 of hers was for the children. Many people might be 
 scandalised at the spectacle of her Excellency romping 
 with slum children at a haying party, with the enjoy- 
 ment of a child. I confess that she never was so 
 excellent to my eyes as when she played with children, 
 poor children, her arms full of them, in the hay on a 
 summer day. 
 
 Her feeling for childhood was something very de- 
 lightful. I told her once about a growing girl who could 
 not be detached from the cot-eiderdown of her babyhood 
 because she had talked to the flowers of the pattern and 
 made stories about them in the long, light mornings 
 before grown-up people were awake. Her smile had all 
 tender humour in it. 
 
 Her works were really endless. The Women's 
 National Health Association, of which she was President, 
 covered all manner of activities : the provision of Sana- 
 toria, of Prevention Homes, of After Care Committees : 
 there was the supply of pure milk to the Dublin babies : 
 the Babies' Clubs, where the mothers brought their 
 babies and themselves weekly to receive medical advice, 
 and had instruction sweetened by a good tea and a talk 
 in a warm, weU-lit room. There was the Blue Bird Van 
 which used to distribute health literature up and down 
 the country : there was the crusade for clean homes and 
 decent conditions of living. There was no end to the 
 activities. Not the least blessed aspect of these works 
 was that they gathered in women from the stagnant life 
 of the country towns to work for the common good. 
 The immense capacity for work of such women in Ireland 
 is terribly unorganised. As Lord Macaulay wrote, the 
 Irish Catholics lost their natural leaders when the 
 Catholic gentlemen left the country after the broken 
 Treaty of Limerick and took service in the armies of 
 France, Austria, and Spain. The wife of the local 
 magnate in Ireland is usually alien in creed and politics 
 
io8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 from the people she ought to lead. So she stands aloof, 
 and then all the small social diflFerences come into play. 
 One is reminded of the American lady who declined to 
 see the most magnificent of Durbars because she was 
 ' not going to curtsy to Mary Leiter.' 
 
 One of the many off-shoots of the W.N.H.A. was the 
 Irish Goat Society. It used to hold a little meeting of 
 its own, side by side with the General Meetings of the 
 W.N.H.A. : perhaps I am wrong to say it was an off- 
 shoot, it may have run concurrently. I once went to a 
 meeting of die Irish Goat Society with the intention of 
 buying a goat, or at least receiving advice on the subject 
 of buying a goat. The meeting on that occasion 
 numbered only one man to several ladies. Certainly 
 two of the ladies, at least — one old — were extremely 
 well worth looking at. I thought they would like to 
 know that I wanted to buy a goat, and perhaps I was 
 rather forward in mentioning it. They looked at me 
 with rather a grieved air ; and the beautiful young lady 
 said she thought they had better take the business first. 
 I retired to a back seat and consoled myself by looking 
 at the beautiful old lady — ^I think she was Miss Spring 
 Rice. My time was rather short, and the Irish Goat 
 Society seemed to have ' worlds enough and time ' for 
 anything. Two or three times I tried to say that I 
 wanted to buy a goat, and was gently but firmly re- 
 pressed. 'We shall write to you on die subject,' said 
 the beautiful young lady, who was, I believe, a niece of 
 the beautiftd old lady. 
 
 Then I departed sadly, turning my mind to consider 
 the claims of the common goat. 
 
 I told this experience to Lady Aberdeen afterwards. 
 She said : ' My dear Mrs. Hinkson, what were you 
 thinking of ? The Irish Goat Society to sell a goat ! 
 Why, it is the very last thing they would think of ! ' 
 
 I went to a good many meetings of her Excellency's 
 during those years. She had no understudy, nobody 
 could take her place. The meetings were duU and dead 
 without her. As soon as she arrived it was like the 
 
THE BEST OF FRIENDS 109 
 
 Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. Everything that had 
 been dead and dusty came alive : the clock had struck, 
 and all was life and energy. 
 
 One of the expeditions we made with Lord Aberdeen 
 was to Peamount, the Sanatorium for Consumption. 
 It was a bright, fresh February day. I remember that 
 on the way we ran over a dog — ^not badly evidently, 
 because he made so much noise. I think, indeed, the car 
 only grazed him. Captain Hope, who was in attendance, 
 went off to make inquiries, but it was not enough for 
 Lord Aberdeen. He had to go himself to see if the dog 
 was hurt — ^just the thing the conventional Viceroy 
 would not have done. I do not know if the dog's owners 
 recognised the Lord-Lieutenant. Anyhow they refused 
 compensation, saying it would teach him to give up 
 rushing at motors. 
 
 At Peamount I was not allowed to enter the buildings. 
 I stood in the doorway of one of the wards in the 
 draught between door and windows, while Lord Aberdeen 
 sat beside the bed of a dying child talking to her as 
 tenderly as a father. That too was unlike the con- 
 ventional Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 Those were the days of the Militant Suffragette, over 
 whom we were very much excited. The lady was always 
 in evidence more or less. She had magnificent courage, 
 and she was often very scurvily treated. One evening 
 when we were driving back to the Viceregal Lodge from 
 somewhere or other in the winter dusk, there was, or 
 there was supposed to be, a Suffragette waiting to heckle 
 the Viceroy. Lord Aberdeen was in anguish lest she 
 should be roughly handled. One of those days Mr. 
 Asquith came to Dublin. There was, or there was sup- 
 posed to be, an attempt to set the Theatre Royal, where 
 one of his big meetings was to be held, on fire. A Dublin 
 editor said to me : ' Good God ! Last night women 
 were hunted like rats through the streets of DubHn ! 
 . I told this to Lord Aberdeen and he was dreadfully 
 distressed. Later on one of the ladies who had been 
 a hunger-striking Suffragette — ^I use the commonly 
 
no THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 accepted word, which I dislike— told me that nothing 
 coTild exceed his anxious kindness and concern for them 
 when they were in prison. She had been one of the 
 hunted that night, when there was a very indiscriminate 
 hunting. She said that she was glad to find herself in 
 the hands of the police, and did not much care where 
 they were taking her to, so long as she was safe from 
 those terrible htmters. There were terrible elements 
 in what looked like being a sex war at that time, terrible 
 possibilities of degradation and cruelty. Tliat is one 
 of the things the war has delivered us from. 
 
 Despite her preoccupation with many charities and her 
 way of turning night into day, there was, there is, some- 
 thing extraordinarily comfortable about Lady Aberdeen. 
 She, too, is of the women who make home wherever they 
 are. The hospitaHty of the Viceregal Lodge overflowed 
 to the meetings over which she presided. There was 
 always a delicious tea during the sittings of the W.N.H.A. 
 at Ely House : and the General Meeting had a fine 
 lunch provided for its two or three hundred attend- 
 ants. Even if you were kept up to the small hours 
 at the Viceregal Lodge, even if dinner was occasionally 
 postponed tiU eleven o'clock, one never minded. One 
 was steeped in an atmosphere of warm comfort and 
 kindliness. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ROME 
 
 The Shadow was now almost at the point of blotting out 
 the sun. In April, 1914, I met Mrs. Murrough O'Brien 
 driving, and she stopped to speak to me. Somehow or 
 other I complained that I had never travelled — I had 
 been held up by so many things during the years when I 
 ought to have travelled ; I did not suppose I ever should 
 now. 
 
 ' Ah, well,' she said consolingly, ' I dare say the oppor- 
 tunity is on its way. Sometimes a door is opened very 
 suddenly.' 
 
 A f6w days later, on the 27th April 1914, a door was 
 opened. I received a letter from Lady Aberdeen, who 
 was going to Rome to the Quinquennial Meeting of the 
 International Congress of Women, of which she was 
 president. She asked me if I would go with her. 
 
 Well, of course, it was a most wonderful door. I 
 confess I was rather frightened of it. To go out on 
 that splendid adventure, unaccompanied by one member 
 of my own family, who have guarded and kept my 
 purblind way so that I must never go alone anywhere, 
 fairly daunted me. But, of course, I said I would go, 
 I knew it was a splendid door, though I looked through 
 it with absolute terror. 
 
 I lunched at the Viceregal Lodge on Tuesday, the 29th, 
 when arrangements were made for the journey, and left 
 Dublin on the night of April 30th. 
 
 Never did any one approach a great adventure with 
 such a chiUy heart as I did. It was not bettered by 
 some one telling me as we waited at a dark railway station 
 on the night before I left Dublin, that dear Father 
 
 in 
 
112 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Gilbert Dolan was dead. He had been dead nearly a 
 month, and we had not known. The loneliness of his 
 going, without one word of farewell to us, to whom 
 and our children he was tenderly attached, added to my 
 loneliness. 
 
 It was my own fault that I did not travel with Lady 
 Aberdeen, who has a panacea against loneUness and 
 fearfulness, instead of with one of her A.D.C.'s, Captain 
 Roger Bellingham, and his young wife. She was sending 
 them before her, with her usual exquisite consideration, 
 because Mrs. Bellingham had had a long iUness in the 
 preceding winter, and she must not be tired by the 
 rapid journey she herself was prepared to make. I 
 beheve I suggested going with the Bellinghams from a 
 really humble thought that I might be a trouble to her 
 or in her way. 
 
 It was a lost opportunity I have never ceased to regret. 
 The young couple, mere boy and girl, could have done 
 very well without my companionship. Some one said 
 to me, ' You should have travelled with her Excellency. 
 She is so considerate. You would not have minded the 
 rush through — ^with her.' 
 
 I should not : it would have been beautiful, and I 
 should have forgotten to be lonely. 
 
 Just before we left the North Wall Station that night 
 a Viceregal messenger arrived with Httle baskets for 
 Mrs. Bellingham and me. I forget what was in her 
 basket. In mine were early strawberries, with a little 
 packet of castor sugar inscribed in Lord Aberdeen's 
 writing. It was so like him. 
 
 It was a cold night- journey. The next morning we 
 were in London. It was the first of May and May had 
 come to London, London of the pre-war days, more 
 enchantingly clean and fresh and fair than she comes to 
 the country. 
 
 It was very warm and the watering-carts were out. 
 One side of the streets was buried in deep cool shadow ; 
 the other side had the sun. The West End window- 
 boxes showed gold and white daisies with long trails 
 
ROME 113 
 
 of greenery. The first leafage was on the black boughs, 
 a sudden wonder of green light. There were stacks of 
 flowers by the pavements. Every boy carrying a basket 
 whistled. The country wind blew down all the west- 
 ward-looking streets. It was London's moment of aU 
 the year. I was seeing it, though I did not know, as I 
 should never see it again. 
 
 Augustine Henry, now Professor of Forestry in the 
 Royal College, of Science in Dublin after many years spent 
 in China, whose talk is golden, for he has stranger and 
 more fascinating things to tell than any other tilker I 
 remember, said to me once that the Enghsh made the 
 best travellers in the world. He excluded the trippers. 
 I was to realise that on my journey. We stayed the 
 night in Paris, saw some sights the next day, and went 
 on in the afternoon by the Paris-to-Rome Express. It 
 was the very last day of its running for that season, and 
 I suppose its very last trip until it is resurrected, if it is, 
 after the war. We had come through that quiet land of 
 the rivers and waterways which in a few short months 
 would be the battlefield of the Marne. And now we 
 left Paris behind and rushed away down south, the air 
 growing warmer every moment. The train was full of 
 German Jews, who sat in the corridors in recHning- 
 chairs and grunted when they had to rise to let you pass. 
 The Uttle gimcrack train-de-luxe, with all its gilding 
 and mirrors, seemed a proper setting for them. I 
 shared a washing-arrangement with a couple of them, 
 and it was paralysing, when one opened the looking-glass 
 door, to see some one else opening the other looHng- 
 glass door of communication with their carriage. I don't 
 know how many times I retreated hastily and bolted 
 my door before I discovered that I was frightened of my 
 own image. 
 
 We went through the Alps in the night, so I had to 
 wait for the return journey for that wonder — I had seen 
 nothing higher than the Welsh and Irish mountains. But 
 about four o'clock in the morning I awoke and realised 
 that I was in Italy. I got up, and very reverently knelt, 
 
 H 
 
114 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 before I drew up the blind. I had to see Italy for the 
 first time on my knees. (I don't suppose there was 
 much kneeling, except to Plutus, in that little fast- 
 flying Paris-to-Rome Express.) But there was nothing, 
 save a thick golden mist under which Italy lay hidden. 
 
 However, it was nice to get up so early and have my 
 washing out of the way before the plutocrats were ready — 
 if they washed.* I sat by the window all the morning, 
 while the mist lifted and I saw the land which has all 
 maiikind for lovers. After breakfast I spent the morn- 
 ing hours in the Bellinghams' little carriage, where the 
 yoimg vsdfe sewed a baby's frock, and the young husband 
 wrote letters, now and again looking up, with a smile, 
 to tell me something of the places we were passing 
 through. We were running along the Gulf of Grenoa, 
 There was something Hght and bright, almost like a 
 spiritual atmosphere, in die little carriage. The Medi- 
 terranean was so blue and the sky so blue, the 
 oHve-trees so dark, and the white buildings on their 
 heights so dazzHngly white, that it was aU as though 
 the world had come new from God's hands. Presently 
 I discovered that we were passing the scenes of the 
 young people's honeymoon. The writing and the 
 sewing were put down, while they discovered this and 
 that remembered spot. Looking at them one would 
 have said the auguries were all propitious. Yet Roger 
 BelUngham had barely ten months to live, and the 
 anniversary of the day we started on the glorious hoHday 
 the young widow was listening to her husband's panegyric 
 at his Memorial Service. 
 
 We had no prevision of these things. It was a most 
 wonderful journey, I have always counted it as a mercy 
 of the good God that I should have made it, seeing things 
 in the undisturbed Peace which had taken so many 
 golden years to bmld. One day during that happy time 
 in Rome, the Women's Congress sat in dehberation at 
 the British Embassy upon the question of how best to cele- 
 brate the Hundred Years of Peace between England and 
 America, which should be arrived at in 1915. I do not 
 
ROME 115 
 
 know what was the result of the dehberation. I was 
 in the garden. I usually was in the garden, or some- 
 where else, when the Congress was in deliberation. 
 Rome in May 19 14 was far too wonderful a thing to my 
 unaccustomed eyes for me to spend the time in the hot 
 and crowded rooms where her Excellency sat so patiently, 
 hour after hour, bearing with cranks and wild women 
 with an infinite toleration. 
 
 I shall not inflict upon the reader, who knows all about 
 Rome, anything but my Personalia. I met my first good 
 English traveller as I sat in the garden of that bright 
 and clean caravanserai, the Hotel Quirinal, on the first 
 day after arrival, which happened to be Sunday. I was 
 not up to the strenuous sight-seeing and visiting of the 
 young couple, who were so eager that it seems, looking 
 back, as though unconsciously they knew that there was 
 not much time. As I sat down to my solitary tea in the 
 garden there came this good traveller, one of those English 
 country ladies, honest, and with something of a hard- 
 bitten, sporting look, as though they were used to the 
 wind and the weather, as straight-going and weU-bred 
 as their own horses ; the kind of woman who can go 
 anywhere, her coat-of-mail her own unconscious fear- 
 lessness. She was the daughter of a Warwickshire 
 baronet, the possessor of a beautiful name, and she 
 was on her way to join her father and mother at 
 Athens, travelling, I think, without even a maid. Pro- 
 bably she was not more than twenty-eight, or perhaps 
 not so much ; but she would not look a day older at 
 thirty-eight. To my solitary table, where I sat very 
 lonely and very shy, she came, suggesting that we 
 should have tea together. I joyfully agreed, and after- 
 wards she took me sight-seeing, through the crowded 
 Sunday streets, with all the colours of the women's 
 dresses and head-dresses, the vivacious Southern faces, 
 the beautiful soldiers and sailors, the friars, the ecclesi- 
 astics of one kind or another — all very wonderful to me. 
 After two or three hours together she brought me back 
 to my hotel, bade me a friendly farewell, and passed away 
 
ii6 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 into the void. Wherever she may be, brave, kind, and 
 capable, I send her my love, and pray the war may have 
 spared her dearest belongings, although I know she 
 would have risen to anything that might befall. 
 
 We had been almost the first to arrive of those con- 
 nected with the Congress, but on Saturday the hotel 
 began to be like the Tower of Babel. By Monday it 
 was quite like. All sorts of unknown tongues were to be 
 heard in the corridors and rooms of the hotel. Beaming 
 faces met one everywhere. The delegates were in 
 holiday and sisterly mood. I was embraced by many 
 ladies as I went up and down the stairs. ' Ah me ! we 
 met last at Stockholm,' or Berlin, or somewhere else. It 
 was said in English, or I conjectured it in the unknown 
 tongue. After a few disclaimers I gave up saying it was 
 my first Congress, and that I was not ofiicial. So many 
 of them remembered me perfectly, and were so pleased 
 to see me again. 
 
 The last trace of loneliness vanished with Lady 
 Aberdeen's coming on the Monday morning. Before 
 I had seen her a lady very well known in Rome, Mrs. 
 Marian MuIhaU, had come in and carried me off to a 
 semi-private Audience with the Pope. I was not like 
 to be lonely once Mrs. MuIhaU had taken kind possession 
 of me. She represented Argentina at the Congress. 
 She was known in Rome as the Queen of Patagonia, and 
 I believe she was the first woman who had navigated the 
 Amazon river. 
 
 At the Vatican there was a small, select Bavarian 
 Pilgrimage. I saw the big Pilgrimage later at an open- 
 air Audience in the CortUo di St. Angelo. They were 
 charming, those Bavarian women — ^I remember nothing 
 of the men — -with their grave, pure faces under the 
 mantilla. We did our Audience very thoroughly, and 
 then Mrs. Mulhall, who was nothing if not energetic, 
 carried me off to present me to Cardinal Merry del Val. 
 I had been somewhat oppressed by the heat, the 
 splendour, the hothouse atmosphere of the Vatican, 
 all the officialdom revolving about a simple old man, who 
 
ROME 117 
 
 looked like an Irish parish priest, except for some strange 
 radiance, which one could not ascribe only to the white- 
 ness of his garments. He was even then in weak health, 
 so that the Audiences were much curtailed. I was not 
 surprised — ^the poor old Holy Father, who had come 
 from the sea-breezes of his beloved Venice to this stifling 
 great palace. Perhaps, after all, those marble halls 
 would be stone-cold, like the Roman churches, without 
 artificial heat. Cardinal Merry del Val had a breezy, 
 British manner, as though he waived the kissing of his 
 ring and offered you a hearty British handshake instead. 
 
 After that I saw the Holy Father many times, but 
 never in private Audience, though several kind people 
 were anxious to procure me that privilege. I was 
 alarmed of it, the more because of how greatly I should 
 have appreciated it : but many prelates and monsignore 
 sent me orders for public and semi-public Audiences : I 
 had them to spare. Once it was known, I was besieged. 
 Ladies from the Antipodes came to me : ' Just think of 
 the thousands and thousands of miles we have come, and 
 are we not to see the Holy Father after all ? ' they pleaded, 
 almost, or quite with tears. I don't think the Vatican 
 altogether approved of the Congress, orthodox as it was 
 so far as the British and other sections were concerned. 
 The Congress had hoped, I think, for some recognition : 
 I am sure many good Catholic members had prayed for 
 it : but it did not come. I was fortunate in being able 
 to take relays of ladies who must have gone away else 
 without seeing the Pope : and it was then I discovered 
 how many non-Catholic, EngHsh people had a Catholic 
 member of their family. I always went supplied with 
 rosaries for the Pope's blessing, and the heartfelt grati- 
 tude of the Protestant ladies, who had not known of 
 such a thing, when I presented them with a rosary to 
 hold up for blessing was really touching. 
 
 We went to all sorts of functions, official, semi- 
 official, and private. Once it was a garden-party at 
 Queen Margharita's palace, where one saw how beautiful 
 the ladies of the Italian aristocracy are. They extin- 
 
ii8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 guished the colder northern beauty. We were presented, 
 each in turn to the Queen, who gave us the most beauti- 
 ful toses, accompanied by gracious, murmured words 
 that were like roses. I missed being presented to the 
 royal poet as an Irish poet, and so receiving special 
 honour, as Lady Aberdeen had designed, by not awaiting 
 my turn. 1 went with the Dutch ladies. We were 
 entertained at the ViUas, at Tivoli and Frascati. There 
 were no end to banquets and garden-parties, and all sorts 
 of gay happenings. 
 
 The day we were at Queen Margharita's garden-party 
 our coming and going was overlooked from a window of 
 the Quirinal Palace by the beautiful, dark-eyed Queen 
 Elena and her lovely children. Not that I could see 
 them, but I was told they were there. Lady Aberdeen, 
 fresh from being received by the Queen, told us at a 
 quiet dinner in her own apartments, at which I and Mrs. 
 Forbes of Rothiemay, who had taken me under her wing, 
 were the only guests, about her visit. Queen Elena 
 had told her that she was the eldest of nine children. 
 When her youngest brother was born her mother was 
 very iU, and her father came to her with the baby brother 
 and placed him in her arms. ' Here is a baby for you, 
 Elena,' he said. ' Your mother will have nothing to do 
 with him. He is entirely yours.' So the Princess Elena 
 went to the hospital at Cettinje and trained as a doctor, 
 the better to rear her baby brother. The staff of the 
 Quirinal Palace counted then about seven hundred, and 
 every moriiing between seven and nine o'clock any one 
 who was ill was free to come and be seen and prescribed 
 for by the doctor-Queen. The morning of Lady 
 Aberdeen's visit, the Queen said she had not slept well 
 and had wakened very tired, wishing that she might 
 stay in bed, but she got up all the same to look to her 
 household. 
 
 The royal children were devoted to animals and were 
 allowed to have any pets they pleased. Among them 
 were two miniature donkeys who wandered all over the 
 Palace. The children expected their mother to notice 
 
ROME 119 
 
 their pets and praise them, and when she forgot they 
 would tell the animal sadly : ' Never mind, Bebe, Mama 
 passes you by. She is not aware that you wish her to 
 notice you, to speak to you. She is not reaUy cruel.' 
 
 As President of the Women's Congress, Lady Aber- 
 deen was far less approachable by the general run of 
 people than she was in Ireland. She never entered the 
 public rooms. She was indeed a queen. I loved those 
 special occasions when I saw her quietly, beyond 
 functions where I walked purblind, amid the 
 
 ' Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realised.' 
 
 There was another delightfiil informal occasion when 
 a Canadian lady, who was a great friend of liady Aber- 
 deen's and often entertained for her, gave a lunch to 
 some of the Colonial ladies, and the table was smothered 
 in the wonderful Roman roses. I sat on her Excel- 
 lency's right hand and was made much of, as she knows 
 how to do it, and the Colonial ladies were so kind and 
 pleasant and remembered, or pretended to remember, 
 the books I had written. 
 
 Sometimes I was extraordinarily adventurous, con- 
 sidering that I could not see beyond my own nose. I 
 went shopping with but one word to negotiate with : 
 ' Quanto ? ' Generally the purchase was carried out by 
 a cheerful pantomime : but once I was most dreadfully 
 stuck over an attempted purchase of rose-water. I asked 
 for Eau-de-Rose. There were at least twenty assistants 
 trying to make out what I meant, and bringing me 
 everything I didn't want. The legend ' English Spoken ' 
 was on every shop window ; but I never found any one 
 who spoke EngHsh. 
 
 One Sunday I went ofi by myself, immediately after 
 dSjeuner, when all the English-speaking people went out 
 in the blazing sun and the Romans retired to the siesta, 
 to visit an archbishop and a monsignor. I believe I 
 took the latter first. He was the purple patch in jthe 
 life of a family of good and kind Irish Protestants who 
 
I20 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 were our friendly neighbours at ShanHU. To them 
 we owe the inimitable Fritz. Long, long ago their 
 cousin had become a Catholic, and had somehow come 
 to be a count and a monsignor. Of course they did 
 not know that monsignore are common objects of the 
 countryside in Rome. The kind, Irish Protestant 
 papa, who might have been cursing the Pope if he were 
 not too weU-mainnered, mentioned with pride to the 
 Irish Catholic children that he had a cousin at Rome 
 who belonged to the Pope's household and was a monsig- 
 nor and a count, who prayed for him every day at Mass. 
 That romantic figure revolutionised the whole outlook 
 of the Irish Protestant famUy. The Protestant papa 
 used to say broad-mindedly that there was a good deal 
 to be said for the Pope, and that, for his part, he re- 
 spected him. Well, they deserved their purple patch. 
 
 When I went to Rome I had to see this romantic 
 figure and report on him to the Irish Protestant family 
 to whom he was a hidden joy and romance — a light, a 
 rose in their hves, of which the drab world knew nothing. 
 So off I went aU alone, in one of the little Roman car- 
 riages which carries, or carried, you a great distance for 
 one lira. Baedeker said that the ItaUans were very fond 
 of tips and always expected one. He omitted to say 
 that a very tiny tip pleased them extravagantiy. I 
 suppose there must have been many visitors to Rome 
 who did not tip, for I always noticed the gloomy appre- 
 hension gather on the face of my driver till it sat like 
 a thundercloud on his brow at the end of the journey 
 When I presented him with the equivalent of twopence. 
 Heavens, what a change ! Nods and becks and wreathed 
 smiles are nothing to express it. He threw his cap in 
 the air, he all but embraced me. 
 
 I had not a word of ItaUan when I set out to find the 
 Count de Raimond. I just handed his visiting-card to 
 the driver, and off we started ; I upheld by the thought 
 of what a commotion it would cause in my family if 
 they could but see me. We arrived at the house. It 
 was a high house with an open staircase, a porter's lodge 
 
ROME 121 
 
 inside the entrance. My driver handed me over to a 
 small boy who came out of the porter's lodge, explaining 
 to him what I wanted. The small boy gave me instruc- 
 tions in Italian which I pretended to understand, and 
 I obeyed his pointed finger and went up the stairs. On 
 each floor three or four high doors confronted me, each 
 with a name above it, which I could not read. I went 
 up and up. Then I became alarmed at the strangeness 
 and silence. Supposing one of those doors should open 
 and a terrible face appear ! I went downstairs again 
 stealthily, and waited at the top of the first flight of 
 steps for a while, intending to appear as though I had 
 found the Monsignor at home and made my call. 
 
 I did not deceive that small boy. At the sound of 
 my returning footsteps, he came in from a conversation 
 with my driver — seized me, and as the children say in 
 Ireland ' hooshed ' me upstairs again — ^it means as 
 though one drove chickens — stopped me at the proper 
 door, and never left me tiU I was face to face with the 
 Monsignor. 
 
 He was a dear little kindly old man. When my 
 family reported what I had said of him to the kind 
 Protestant papa, he was terribly dashed. ' Old man ? ' 
 
 he repeated, ' but ' I think they had thought of 
 
 him as something splendid and young. 
 
 Next I saw the Archbishop. The little boy of the 
 porter's lodge and the driver had evidently discussed m^. 
 The latter only shrugged his shoulders when I declined 
 to alight at the foot of a flight of steps leading to a flagged 
 terrace in front of the archiepiscopal abode, and drove 
 a few further yards, which brought me up with a flourish 
 at the door. I wonder what he and the small boy said 
 about me. 
 
 The Archbishop — a French-Canacfian — ^gave me tea, and 
 filled my arms with roses, more than I could carry. We 
 walked in his garden where we picked the roses. He was so 
 kind and simple that he was really worth that adventure. 
 
 Another morning, before I had discovered Margreita 
 Beer to take me to Mass, I stood looking out at the 
 
122 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 pouring rain, not a conveyance to be seen — ^and between 
 me and Santa Maria del Angeli the immense square of 
 the Terminus, as daunting as Trafalgar Square, with an 
 equal flow of a more recUess traffic, to say nothing of 
 trams added. Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, a distinguished 
 Scottish delegate, came down the stairs whQe I stood in 
 the haU. I would not give myself away for worlds ; it 
 is a thing I have always hated to do, but perhaps distress 
 was in my attitude. 
 
 ' Now what do you want to do ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' I want to get to Mass, and I shall have to cross 
 that awful square, where I shall certainly be run down.' 
 
 ' Wait a moment.' 
 
 She hurried away and came back in waterproofs, and, 
 good Scottish Presbyterian as she was, she took me across 
 the square into the church, planted me before an altar 
 where a priest was just going to say Mass, whispered to 
 me to remember the steps inside the door as I came out, 
 and to drive back — aU die little carriages would be out 
 by that time — ^and so left me. 
 
 I did remember the steps as I came out ; but there 
 was not a trace of a little carriage. I stood a moment 
 helplessly gazing at the maelstrom into which I must 
 plunge to get back to the Quirinale. Then I caught 
 sight of a lady about to cross — ^with a profile dehcate as 
 a cameo — one of the lovely Italians who might pose for 
 the Madonna any day. I explained, or tried to explain 
 in what French I could muster. She nodded as though 
 to say she understood, took my hand and drew it through 
 her arm, and we plu,nged. 
 
 She held me tightly tiU she had placed me within the 
 revolving cage which admitted to the hotel, then patted 
 my hand with her own and went oflF. 
 
 A little lady from Finland, who was a delegate, had 
 travelled with a broken leg. She said she had been 
 carried across half Europe by good Samaritans. She 
 missed nothing of the Congress either, not its business 
 nor its gaieties. Ah, well, the world is full of good 
 Samaritans, if one has need of them. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 
 
 There was an evening when there was a very big function, 
 at the Hall of the University, I think. I had gone with 
 her Excellency's Canadian friend and Mrs. Forbes and 
 a Jewish lady whose name I have forgotten. Entering 
 the Hall they were swept from me by the crowd. The 
 trouble was that no one ever knew Aozi' short-sighted I was, 
 so that it was almost blindness so far as regarded faces. 
 It was appalling to find myself in a crowd, talking all 
 the tongues under Heaven I did not know, and not one 
 word of English anywhere. I attached myself to a 
 group and a nation with which I had nothing to do and 
 resolutely refused to be detached, though they were very 
 particular about it, as they were all sitting in sections 
 and countries and wanted my chair, which, having 
 achieved I stuck to. 
 
 Doubtless they would have dislodged me, but I was 
 saved by Chrystal MacMillan, the redoubtable Suffrage 
 lady who had pleaded the cause of the woman barrister for 
 three hours before the House of Lords some years earlier. 
 I am not surprisedthat the House of Lords listened. She 
 was very good to look at, even if she had not come as a 
 deliverer, a splendid-looking creature with nobly waving 
 hair just touched with grey, steel-blue eyes, and the 
 rosy beauty of the Scotswoman which appears lightly 
 touched with the sparkle of frost. Anything whole- 
 somer than that beauty could not well be imagined. 
 She was like a clean north wind if it had no sting in it, 
 and |she looked honest as the day. She towered in 
 height, and when one walked with her in the streets of 
 
124 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Rome small Italian men used to turn and follow at an 
 admiring distance. 
 
 She saved me that time, but presently she went away 
 to speak, and I saw her no more. But I was seen if I 
 did not see, and Mrs. Forbes retrieved me. It was 
 spilling rain when we emerged from the Hall ; the Jewish 
 lady went off in search of a cab, while Mrs. Forbes 
 wondered how •she was to save her beautiful ostrich 
 feathers if we had to make a rush for the tram, which 
 was some distance off. 
 
 While we stood under the portico a carriage drew up 
 and received three occupants. Some one called out that 
 there was one place, and Mrs. Forbes was whisked away, 
 calling Tjack to me to stay where I was till the Jewish 
 lady returned. 
 
 Well, that was easier said than done. We had left 
 the HaU before the end of the last speech. Suddenly, 
 while I stood there, all the doors were opened and out 
 came the flood, in which I was swept off my feet. I 
 could not hear one word of EngUsh nor see a face I 
 knew, and panic took me with the thought of being left 
 iij the streets of Rome at midnight, with no language 
 in which to explain my difficulties, not knowing in what 
 direction my hotel lay nor how to get there. 
 
 At my worst moment I was suddenly seized by the 
 man who had driven us to the Hall and placed in the 
 interior of the carriage. What a relief it was to be in 
 that safety out of the seething polyglot crowd ! He 
 had climbed to the box again to wait for the rest of his 
 cargo. How beautiful was his stoUd square back as I 
 saw it through the glass, feeUng so secure in my haven 
 of refuge. To me came a party of American ladies. 
 
 ' Why, here 's a carriage with room for three or four 
 or five ; only one person in it.' 
 
 I beat them off with my hands, explaining that the 
 carriage was engaged. They were persuaded with 
 difficulty. Then they tried a compromise. ' Well, if 
 you won't let us go in, you go right to that street away 
 there till you meet with a cab and send it back for us.' 
 
THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 125 
 
 I refused to budge. Then they thought of another 
 possibility. 
 
 ' You just take us in and carry us right down there to 
 the street-cars.' 
 
 I sat tight and they went off at last. 
 
 I am conscious that these tales suggest a rather fearful 
 form of enjoyment, but they were sandwiched in between 
 all sorts of delights. It was no fault but my own that I 
 never said how blind I was, and it was my own misfortune 
 that I had no languages. 
 
 There was a Sunday morning when Mrs. Mulhall gave 
 a breakfast at her hotel in honour of Lady Aberdeen. 
 It was a very memorable breakfast. There were three 
 cardinals, Bourne, Farley, and Vicenzo VanuteUi; the 
 Heads of the English, Irish, and Scottish Colleges ; 
 various ministers and their wives ; and others — ^alto- 
 gether a very distinguished company. Cardinal VanuteUi 
 was magnificent in his scarlet robes. Very taU, full of 
 gesture and animation, with a swift, rushing air, he 
 looked the old Roman aristocrat to the life. The English 
 and American cardinals were all simplicity. I had 
 known Cardinal Bourne of old. Our first meeting was 
 at St. Edmund's College, Ware, on a Speech Day when 
 the boys performed a Greek play. I was to have had 
 the seat beside the Cardinal at lunch, but a breakdown 
 of our motor kept us late. After we had had a belated 
 lunch we were guided through the dark auditorium to 
 our seats. Some one said close beside me : ' How are 
 you ? ' I answered, ' Very well, thank you, how are 
 you ? ' A little later I discovered it was the Cardinal, 
 whose simple sincerity and real goodness have come to 
 their own during the war. 
 
 I sat on a sofa with Cardinal Farley, kind, simple, and 
 fatherly. He had helped me when an American Catholic 
 paper had ' lifted ' my stories, making them make 
 restitution, which they did most unwillingly and un- 
 graciously. I had his kindness, at least, when an 
 American Catholic review had found a poem of mine 
 unorthodox and had left nothing unsaid in the way of 
 
126 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 disparagement of me. These two prelates were delight- 
 ful, contrasts in their good simplicity to the splendour, 
 as of the old Roman patrician, of Cardinal VanuteUi. 
 But I have never found the high ecclesiastics of the 
 Catholic Church lacking in that simple humanity. 
 
 I have somewhere one of the Uttle scarlet cardinal's 
 hats that marked the places of the cardinals at Mrs. 
 MuUiaU's dejeuner, with Queen Margharita's card of in- 
 vitation, and the blue ribbon and inscription that confined 
 her roses. Also I have a visiting card of Cardinal Merry 
 del Val's. I found it in my place at the hall bureau one 
 day, and straightway sent it home in the letter I was 
 about to write. A Uttle later Roger BeUingham came 
 to me : ' Mrs. Hinkson, did you see a card left by 
 Cardinal Merry del Val for her Ex. ? ' 'I thought it 
 was for me and I have sent it home.' He giggled : 
 ' You 'd better teU her Ex.' So I went upstairs, knocked 
 at the door of her Excellency's suite, and was bidden 
 enter. When I confessed she pealed her merry girlish 
 laughter. ' I 'm so glad,' she said, ' if it will give them 
 pleasure at home.' 
 
 That Sunday of the dejeuner was our last day in Rome. 
 It was becoming very hot. The windows of the big haU 
 where the meetings were held had to be closed because 
 of the noise in the streets. I used to wonder how Lady 
 Aberdeen endured it. Others used to get out at inter- 
 vals into the open air. She sat through the morning 
 and afternoon sittings, always perfectly patient, courte- 
 ous, and considerate. 
 
 I wrote eleven articles about the Congress, but I did 
 not sit through those meetings. Every morning a 
 charming girl steward, with the dehghtful name of 
 Lydia Scuderi, used to set me a comfortable chair just 
 within the glass screen, supply me with a table, pens, 
 ink, and paper. She did it unweariedly right through 
 to the end, dear thing ! I never stayed beyond ten 
 minutes. It was much nicer to write in the garden^ 
 Her Ex., as I had learnt to call her, said to me in her 
 whimsical, quizzing way : ' Mrs. Hinkson, how much 
 
THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 127 
 
 did you hear of the proceedings this morning ? There 
 was something you should have heard. You are the 
 most elusive person. I see you fixed there so nicely 
 every morning, and when I look again you are gone.' 
 ' But, your Excellency,' I said, ' I do the articles all 
 the same.'. 
 
 I did. I had six articles on the Congress in the 
 Westminster, besides ' oddments,' as a friend of mine 
 used to call unconsidered trifles. And I actually got 
 one into the Times, which was far from friendly to the 
 women. There was a great run on the Westminster in 
 the hotel, and I was the object of much interest to the 
 delegates. One day I was sketched by a long-haired 
 young man from; a Roman paper, who flung himself into 
 attitudes when he was told that I was a ' poet of Ireland.' 
 The sketch was rather flattering. 
 
 That last Sunday I came back from driving with Mrs. 
 MulhaU, after the dejeuner, to see St. Paul-Without- 
 the- Walls, and the grave of John Keats in the English 
 cemetery, to find Frank Mathew waiting for me. He 
 had heard at just the last moment that I was in Rome. 
 He stayed till eleven o'clock, talking over old London 
 days ; and that night was my last in the cheerful bed- 
 room overlooking the Via Nazionale, which I loved, 
 while other people wondered how I could endure the 
 noise. It was nice to overhear the citizens of Rome 
 meeting all night long, roaring a greeting while they 
 clapped each other on the back. Baedeker had warned 
 me against sleeping with open windows for fear of 
 something or other — ^Roman fever, perhaps. My 
 windows opened like folding doors. Every night, as 
 soon as I had switched off my own Hght, I threw back 
 the windows wide. The electric light of the streets 
 came in and the jingling of the trams, and the jollity of 
 the promenaders. It was exactly like sleeping in the 
 street. Rome may have gone to bed in those nights, 
 i)ut I never knew it to. 
 
 The last day of all Frank Mathew and Mrs. Mathew 
 came and took me to see the new Cardinal Gasquet, but, 
 
128 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 alas, he had just gone out, and there was no further 
 chance of seeing him. So I lunched with the Mathews 
 as the Hotel Beausite, which had been a convent and 
 had yet a conventual peace. My memory of it is that 
 it was all cool, creamy-white walls and fresh green 
 matting, and here and there through open windows a 
 waving bough of green. 
 
 I had almost fargotten to say that when we could not 
 see Cardinal Gasquet, the Mathews took me to see the 
 Trevi Fountain, or perhaps it was on our way, and I 
 threw a penny into it for die urchins to dive for, so that 
 I might come back again according to the superstition. 
 I should have missed the Trevi but for them. When I 
 came back Alice MeyneU asked me what I liked best in 
 Rome, and I said the fountains. There were many 
 things I adored in Rome — ^the white oxen of the Cam- 
 pagna, the wind that blew a scent of new-mown hay 
 into my face as I came out of St. John Lateran's one 
 evening, the roses, the sunshine, which I could not be 
 persuaded was dangerous because it was just lambent 
 light, the creamy white walls, the glimpses of gardens 
 and the Alban HiQs, certain mosaics, and the gracious 
 and beautiful people — ^but above all, the fountains — ^not 
 only the Trevi, but the many fountains which send a 
 clear and shining rain of jewels into the sunny air, and 
 the great waters like masses of the Nereids' hair at the 
 Villa. 
 
 The Queen's garden-party was the very last of the 
 festivities. That evening I left Rome. I was supposed 
 to be safe and sound in a sleeping-carriage, but the 
 berths were aU taken, so I joined Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon 
 and a friend in their carriage, where there came to us 
 presently a beady-eyed, shivering little ItaHan who 
 absolutely refused to be detached from us. I suspected 
 him of being an anarchist, and that another gendeman 
 of bravo-Uke aspect, who sat aU alone in the carriage 
 to which we would have transferred our man, waited 
 for him with a deadly knife. Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon's 
 friend argued with the intruder in English which she 
 
THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 129 
 
 apparently thought would reach the Italian's intelligence 
 if she prolonged the syllables, making a sort of baby talk 
 of it. ' We . . . three . . . ladies ... do not want 
 . . . man. . . . Very . . . nice . . . carriage . . . only 
 ... one . . . gentleman . . . that way. . . .' She 
 waved with her hand. The Italian only shuddered and 
 fixed his piteous eyes upon us like a beseeching animal. 
 
 Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon's arguments, when she came, 
 were more intelhgible doubtless, but no more effectual. 
 He withdrew himself into his Corner, making himself as 
 small as possible and flinging out his hands in depreca- 
 tion. An appeal to the guard was only answered by the 
 slamming of a door. The charm of the Italian disappears 
 when he becomes a railway official. Our little man 
 stayed. 
 
 The night was stifling. Kind Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, 
 with a sense of guardianship towards me, made me lie 
 down : my feet were within a quarter-inch of the little 
 man's huddled knees. I did not sleep, but the wind 
 from the open window as we rushed along blew sweetly 
 on my face. After a time it was a sea wind. The little 
 man was no end of a nuisance. I could swear he never 
 removed his little black, glittering eyes from my face, 
 what he could see of it. Not a movement escaped him. 
 
 P was sitting up from daybreak watching the country 
 we were passing through, smelling the wind from the 
 sea. At six o'clock we reached Genoa, and we aU, 
 tumbled out and into the waiting-room where we got, 
 from an English-speaking waiter, the most heavenly big 
 cups of hot tea, with delicious sweet rusks and creamy 
 butter. Some one thought of the Italian and offered 
 him one of the rusks which we had had to carry away 
 with us. He only shook his head mournfully. 
 
 As time went on we began rather to like him. He was 
 so painstakingly polite, and so dreadfully anxious to efface 
 himself. He looked rather ghastly by daylight. We 
 began to fear he was ill or going to be ill. Mrs. Ogilvie 
 Gordon's friend offered him a banana, saying, 'Banan-a 
 very . . . good ... for sick . . . man.' He only 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 shook his head and retired, heart-brokenly, into his 
 comer. 
 
 I spent the morning with her Ex., whose carriage 
 had been transformed into a bower of roses by a deputa- 
 tion of ladies at Pisa, I had been seeing the incredible 
 Alps for some time before I came to her. They were 
 incredible. The Apennines had been glorious, but the 
 Alps ! Every time I saw one hanging in the high slgr 
 I said to myself : ' Now that is not an Alp : it is quite 
 impossible : that is a cloud.' But it was always an Alp. 
 
 The Httle carriage had an air of sweet and fragrant 
 homeliness. We talked and her Ex.'s nice Scots maid 
 put in a word now and again. Mrs. Forbes's maid had 
 refused to stir out of her bedroom at the Quirinal 
 because Rome was a heathen place. She had sat there 
 placidly sewing, and I can answer for it, since she did 
 some furbishing-up of an evening-gown for me, that she 
 was a pleasant and efl&cient young woman. I did not 
 tell her I belonged to the Pope of Rome. 
 
 Her Ex.'s maid was, of course, a citizen of the world, 
 yet she thought but slightingly of the little villages, 
 clustered together at the foot of the Alps, and was dis- 
 turbed because the people wouldn't ' spread,' seeing 
 that they had plenty of room to do it. She was not con- 
 vinced by her Ex.'s argument that in the dreadful snows 
 of winter they clustered together for warmth, and ex- 
 pressed the opinion that Scotland was a better place to 
 live in. 
 
 Her Ex. transferred all her roses to me. To my grief 
 she left us half-way, as she was going to Lyons to see the 
 Exhibition with an eye to the Civic Exhibition which she 
 was going to establish in Dublin that summer. 
 
 I had nearly got left behind at Modern, where the 
 dining-car was switched off while I was in it. The lady 
 who rescued me shrieked so much over it as to alarm 
 me. She shrieked around me like a frightened hen, whUe 
 she hustled me along the line to the train, which did not 
 go for twenty minutes afterwards. But she made me 
 nervous enough to seek reassurance from an American 
 
THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 131 
 
 lady, absorbed in her Baedeker, who was in the carriage 
 I entered. She answered me shortly. But I was deter- 
 mined to know that I was all right. ' Tell me this,' I 
 said, ' and I shall ask no more.' At that she smiled, 
 though grimly, and gave me the information I desired. I 
 have always been told that Americans are good travellers. 
 She was the exception. 
 
 As the afternoon went on civilisation seemed to drop 
 from off the tired travellers. I had fled to kind Mrs. 
 Ogilvie Gordon, but as we were rather congested, and 
 the Italian seemed to be sickening for plague, she in- 
 sisted on my going back to the comforts provided by 
 my first-class ticket. 
 
 Comfort ! Good lack ! The men in the corridors 
 would not let me pass. The men in the carriages looked 
 up with a sleepy scowl when I opened the door and 
 never moved their feet, which were extended on the 
 seat that should be mine. A dainty little Frenchwoman, 
 who had been most charming earlier in the day, admiring 
 her Ex.'s roses, barred the way to the compartment 
 which contained only herself and her husband, assuring 
 me volubly that every seat was taken. At last I stepped 
 over some Hebrew legs and sat for a while listening to 
 the gutturals. I would have welcomed even the 
 Baedeker-absorbed American lady, but not one word of 
 English did I hear except from my own party, till, at 
 dinner-time that evening, I heard an English voice 
 remark that every time its owner left England he was 
 gladder to get back again. It was a sentiment I should 
 have disapproved as insular at another moment : in the 
 circumstances my heart warmed to the speaker. 
 
 Better a third-class carriage and a warm welcome than 
 a first-class and decivilisation. I was really happy to 
 get back to Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, and I sat and basked 
 with half-closed eyes and the soft wind in my face, too 
 tired to bother about things. Orange and purple spots 
 had come out by this time in the dark pallor of the 
 Itahan's face. If he was sickening for the plague, as 
 seemed likely — Kismet.' If I was going to carry it home 
 
132 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 to my adored children — Kismet. Nothing mattered. I 
 was too tired to care. 
 
 During the afternoon the Italian began to talk to him- 
 self. He muttered sacred names mixed with what one 
 felt to be rather sacre'd than sacred. He ground his 
 teeth. He might have been going mad as well as getting 
 the plague. What did it matter ? No one troubled to 
 glance his way.* The afternoon and evening were per- 
 fectly beautiful and we were all more or less comatose. 
 
 Just after we had left Dijon behind, under a pale gold 
 evening sky, the Italian suddenly went mad, or we 
 thought he did. He sprang up as though he had been 
 shot, gathered his bags and bundles and flung them into 
 the corridor, muttering awful imprecations apparently, 
 and while we stared at him with wild eyes of horror he 
 dashed towards me, and — shut the window. Then he 
 disappeared, and we did not see him again. Whether 
 he feU a victim to the knife of the other conspirator, 
 whether he flung himself from the rocking and rattling 
 train, I know not. He had borne with an open window 
 for nearly twenty-four hours, and it was too much. I 
 hope he lived and recovered. I am sure he was a harm- 
 less, polite, good-hearted, little rabbit of a man. My 
 own idea is that he was too ashamed of his madness to 
 meet us again, so kept out of our sight. 
 
 The arrival at Paris, too late for the train between 
 the stations, the delicious tea in the open cafe on one 
 of the Boulevards, the drive across michiight Paris, the 
 train, where one washed and dozed, the Channel steamer, 
 where we sat on deck and watched the dawn come ; the 
 run through Kent, beautiful in its greenery ; London ; 
 Euston ; the North-Western Express with a delightful 
 husband and wife, who had made almost the same 
 journey, but had come by the St. Gothard route instead 
 of the Mont Cenis. How I wished they had chosen the 
 Mont Cenis — ^good English travellers ! My tired eyes 
 rested on the beautiful, comfortable English landscape, 
 which I loved and love ; but not so weU as my own 
 country. 
 
THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER 133 
 
 The nice couple left me about Nuneaton. After that 
 I remember nothing, except — ^hazily — my husband taking 
 charge of me at Holyhead. I had been two days and 
 nights without sleep. The next thing I was conscious 
 of was awaking in my own bed after a night's sleep. 
 
 A little later I met Lily Yeats. She told me we had 
 travelled over from Holyhead by the same boat. ' You 
 were very sleepy,' she said, ' but when I said to you : 
 " And did you see His Eminence, the Pope," you woke 
 up and said very smartly, " His Holiness, you ignorant 
 Protestant ! " ' 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 » THE GREAT SUMMER 
 
 It was a glorious summer, disturbed by many rumours 
 of civil war between the Ulster and the Irish Volunteers. 
 It was just before the Roman visit that we dined one 
 evening with the Swift MacNeills — ^to be accurate it was 
 Saturday, the 25 th of AprU. Such a dinner-party ! There 
 were about twenty-four guests, and the dinner recalled 
 the splendid old Irish hospitahty we used to brag about 
 in the EngUsh years. Captain Warner, one of his 
 Ex.'s A.D.C.'s, motored us to the station. On the 
 way he told us of the thrilling events that were happen- 
 ing in Ulster. It was the night of the gun-running at 
 Larne and the seizure of the police barracks. No one 
 knew how soon the country would be in a flame. 
 
 That passed off. We were very busy with the pre- 
 paration for the Civic Exhibition. The old Linerihall 
 Barracks was being transmogrified in the most incredible 
 way from a ruin into very handsome Ught and airy 
 buildings. The situation was rather in the slums — 
 the harmless slums, but her Ex. had got the use of the 
 gardens of the King's Inns ; there was to be a dining- 
 club, and all manner of amusements and side-shows. It 
 looked like being a sort of White City for the DubHners 
 that beautiful summer. There is nothing of the kind 
 in Dublin, where the citizens have to go to Kingstown 
 or Bray for open-air promenades and music. 
 
 That summer the martial spirit was very much in 
 evidence in DubUn. The volunteers were drilling, 
 although not yet in the high favour they were to enjoy 
 a little later, and aU the children in the slums as you 
 went to and from the Exhibition were performing military 
 
THE GREAT SUMMER 135 
 
 exercises with any old stick that might pretend to be a 
 rifle. If you met a group of country boys or men on 
 the road they marched in military formation. The 
 sound of] footsteps was the ringing sound of men 
 marching in time. The country was fast becoming a 
 nation of soldiers. 
 
 There were a great many events that summer, of one 
 kind or another, while the shadow deepened, and the 
 night of blood and fire came down upon the world. 
 
 Many of our events were connected with the Vice- 
 regal Lodge, which we came to know better as time 
 passed. It was certainly a most delightful house to 
 stay at, and the hospitality was most generous. 
 
 Their Ex.'s guests could not do without anything 
 even if they wanted to. I am a slow eater, and I have 
 sometimes discovered that every one else has finished, 
 while I am leisurely proceeding. Many a time this 
 leisureliness has cost me a meal, or the greater portion 
 of it. But not under Lord Aberdeen's eye. If you 
 allowed your plate to be taken away almost full or passed 
 a course, he always wanted to know why. Once when I 
 found unexpectedly that her Ex. was rising, I left my 
 coffee untasted. A few minutes later came a hot cup 
 to the drawing-room. Lord Aberdeen was afraid I 
 had let mine get cold. 
 
 Sometimes this kindness was embarrassing. The 
 dining-room at the Vice-regal Lodge was lit by electric 
 lights running round the cornice. It was soft, but 
 rather dim light — ^for me at all events. When the dish 
 came to me I would first help myself to nothing at all, 
 a little bit of garnishing perhaps. Then Lord Aberdeen 
 would have the dish brought back to me while every one 
 looked on. I would help myself a second time, to half 
 the contents of the dish, which I certainly did not mean 
 to do. 
 
 The big round luncheon or dinner-table at the Lodge 
 always had the air of a family party. The hospitality 
 was unbounded. The sisters, mothers, cousins, and 
 aunts of the Staff came and went freely, and I have been 
 
136 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 told by one who received it that the hospitality of the 
 A.D.C.'s room was extremely lavish. A very frivolous 
 young lady once spoke to me with feeling about Lady 
 Aberdeen's kindness to her guests. ' She is always so 
 anxious about our feeling tired after our dances,' she 
 said, ' when she herself sits up till daybreak, writing 
 letters and looking after all the affairs of her charities.' 
 Lord and Lady Aberdeen had a great affection for the 
 members of their Staff, which was most heartily 
 reciprocated. 
 
 The A.D.C.'s had many functions to attend not at 
 a^ interesting to the ordinary smart young man. It 
 was true that the A.D.C.'s I knew were not ordinary. 
 Each of them had his special seriousness. But I have 
 often smiled at the frock-coated, sleek-headed young 
 man with his top-hat on his knee, waiting patiently during 
 the meetings of the Women's National Health Association 
 or some similar body. 
 
 There was a day when I took Mary Warner, the 
 sister of the most energetic of the A.D.C.'s, to see A. E. 
 at Plunkett House. A. E. was in an unfamiliar mood to 
 me. The weather was hot and perhaps he sighed for 
 Donegal, for he had a weary air. He said to Mary 
 Warner, ' What are A.D.C.'s for ? What do they do ? 
 I 'm afraid I don't know.' ' Well,' she said, ' you see 
 they go to the Baby Clubs, and, of course, they play 
 with the babies, and they are expected to keep lieir 
 swords and things very bright so as. to amuse the 
 babies.' 
 
 The folk-dancing was to be a special feature of the 
 Exhibition. A very nice Miss Betty Burchenal, not a 
 hot-air person, had come from America to teach the 
 children folk-dancing. It was easy with Irish children, 
 who dance like a wave of the sea, given an opportunity. 
 One day we went with Lady Aberdeen to see the practice 
 in the Pound, as the green, enclosed space at die back 
 of that portion of Dublin Castle, formerly the Viceroy's 
 town residence — ^now the Dublin Castle Hospital — ^is 
 irreverently called. We had tea, and then we sat and 
 
THE GREAT SUMMER 157 
 
 watched the children dance, little knowing that before 
 two years passed the Pound would have had tragic use 
 as a graveyard ; for there the bodies of naany killed in 
 the Rebellion of Easter Week were buried temporarily 
 till they could be transferred to graveyards about Dublin. 
 How little one could have dreamt it ! We were laugh- 
 ing at Captain Hope, trailing our green coat, while he 
 said seriously that he was very proud to be an English- 
 man. He had just four months before being killed in 
 action. The tall, red-haired country gentleman talking 
 and laughing with her Ex. was to lose his son and heir 
 almost at the same moment. How little one could have 
 dreamt of that near future. 
 
 Later on there was a great dancing festival in the Park 
 on a glorious summer Saturday. All that day flocks of 
 white children — 
 
 Oh, what a multitude they seemed, those flowers of Dubhn town. 
 Seated in companies, they sit with radiance all their own. 
 The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs. 
 Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands. 
 
 — ^were coming from aU directions towards the Park where 
 they sat out on the grass in rows as though they were 
 swathes of the most delicious hay and ate their buns 
 and oranges. Also, of course, all the parents and 
 brothers and sisters were coming, and, generally, there 
 was a tremendous turn-out of the Dublin poor into the 
 beautiful Park, full of sunshine and shade and scents 
 and songs of birds, and the wind from the Dublin moun- 
 tains sweetly blowing over it. It was a most delightful 
 gala. After the dancing Lady Aberdeen made a pro- 
 gress through the crowd, and was so pressed upon and 
 hemmed in by the affectionate friendliness that a sortie 
 had to be made to rescue her. I have somewhere a 
 snapshot of Captain Hope, hat in hand, steering a way 
 for her. 
 
 That day we had lunched at the Lodge — ^we and our 
 three children and Denis O'Sullivan's son Curtis, who 
 is now a captain in the American Expeditionary Army. 
 
138 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 How elastic that big round table was ! It seemed 
 always full, yet was always capable of expansion. Another 
 guest that day was Sir Frederick Lely, who had been 
 Governor of the Central Provinces of India. The next 
 day there was to be a great review of Irish National 
 Volunteers in Sir Henry Bellingham's park at Castle 
 Bellingham, to which my husband and Curtis O' Sullivan 
 were going. Sis Frederick Lely was very keen to see 
 the Volunteers, so her Ex. asked my husband to take 
 charge of him, and next day the three went down to 
 Casde Bellingham, where Sir Henry and Lady Belling- 
 ham were entertaining a luncheon-party for the review. 
 At that time the Volunteers were not altogether accept- 
 able to the loyal party, and Roger Bellingham had got 
 into trouble shortly after his return from Rome for an 
 indiscreet speech made to the Volunteers. 
 
 There were about four thousand reviewed that day. 
 Sir Frederick, who was seeking Irish types — ^he com- 
 plained that so few of the girls were red-haired — ^was 
 greatly taken with the men. ' Good Lord ! ' he said, 
 ' what would not the Horse Guards give for those 
 fellows ? ' A good many of them probably swelled the 
 ranks of Sinn Fein later on. They had the Northern 
 grit and doggedness. It wiU. be remembered that some 
 of the most serious incidents of the Rebellion happened 
 in those parts, about Meath and Louth : and Castle- 
 beUingham was a storm-centre. 
 
 We at home entertained some visitors that Sunday. 
 An exhilarated one of the party which had gone a- 
 volunteering entered the Hbrary whUe we were talking. 
 ' The Enghsh may leave this country,' he said. 
 
 The next day Sir Frederick Lely lunched with us. 
 He was stiU discontentedly pursuing his search for red- 
 haired types of Irish beauty. We promised him that 
 he should see some at the opening of the Exhibition 
 which was to take place next day. The tea-gardens had 
 been undertaken by a number of young ladies who were 
 to run them a week at a time. We knew the Colleen 
 Rue would be there represented. She was, most beauti- 
 
THE GREAT SUMMER 139 
 
 fully, perhaps, by Kit M'Carthy, a lovely specimen of 
 the red-haired Irish beauty, who has since been acting 
 in Peg-o' -my-Heart, so you will perhaps have seen her. 
 
 The opening was a very smart function. It was like 
 the gayest of gay garden parties, with a military pageant 
 added. There was one very curious incident. The 
 Lord-Lieutenant had a guard of honour of marines 
 who were drawn up in front of the platform. Midway 
 of his speech the word to fall in suddenly rang out from 
 the lips of their officers : Lord Aberdeen was obviously 
 amazed, as was every one else. He left his unfinished 
 speech, came down from the platform, gave them a very 
 brief review, and they swung about and marched away. 
 They had been ordered, at a moment's notice, to rejoin 
 their ship at Kingstown for the mobilisation at Spit- 
 head. We little knew that this mysterious happening 
 meant the beginning of the war so long foretold, the 
 war beyond all wars that have shaken the world. How 
 many men there that day, looking on in amazement, 
 were to fall in the war, how many others, men and 
 women, were to have their hearts broken under the 
 chariots of the war ! 
 
 The Exhibition went on its way gaily. It bade quite 
 fair to be the fashion and to show a record attendance. 
 People could entertain their friends at the Dining-Club 
 — ^it was quite the thing to give luncheon and dinner- 
 parties there — ^there was a splendid dancing-hall with 
 room for the exclusive and the unexclusive : there were 
 the illuminated gardens, with aU the fun of the fair, 
 a cinema theatre, aU sorts of amusements, as weU as 
 instructive exhibits. For some twelve days Dublin dis- 
 covered and adopted the Civic Exhibition, wondering 
 how it had done without such a pleasant place of meet- 
 ing. Then the first blow feU, that was to prepare us 
 for the extinguishing blow. 
 
 The Sunday after the Castle BeUingham meeting we 
 had Betty Burchenal and another American lady to 
 supper, with the Attorney-General of a Colonial De- 
 pendency and a DubHn Castle official. The Irish 
 
HO THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Volunteers had taken a leaf out of the Ulster Volunteers' 
 book and were gun-running in those days. A peer's 
 daughter and the American wife of an Enghshman (with 
 Irish blood), who bears a highly distinguished Enghsh 
 name, had brought in to Howth the romantically named 
 \^Tiite Yacht, with a cargo of rifles. There had been 
 other gun-runnings, and the motors of our most blame- 
 less friends had» assisted in conveying the weapons. 
 We talked of nothing but the probable Civil War. We 
 were told that every Ulster cottage and haU had its 
 picture of the Kaiser side by side with King WiUiam 
 crossing the Boyne, and that Ulster looked to powerful 
 allies, if necessary. 
 
 The Colonial Attorney-General, who bore a very Irish 
 name, said that if there was going to be a scrap he would 
 stay and take a hand in it — on the right side, which was 
 not Ulster's. We had a very merry evening, followed 
 by another week of Exhibition gaieties. Then came 
 Sunday, 26th July. Our evening visitors — ^we always 
 had people to supper on Sunday — ^brought us word that 
 there was trouble in Dublin. It was the day of the gun- 
 running at Howth and the affair at Bachelor's Walk, 
 when a company of the King's Own Scottish Borderers 
 fired on a stone-throwing crowd and killed three people, 
 injuring many others. 
 
 It created a tremendous sensation at the time. All 
 things are relative, and we have grown accustomed to 
 death and killing. I have always thought that the 
 thoroughness with which the men of Easter Week 
 carried out the Rebellion — the military ruthlessness — 
 would not have been possible before the war. The 
 sacredness of human life is lost for the time. 
 
 All Ireland was in a ferment over the Bachelor's Walk 
 affair. Poor Lord Aberdeen did not hear of it tUl word 
 was brought to him when he was at evening service in the 
 private chapel of the Viceregal Lodge. He was dis- 
 tracted, and was for going at once round the hospitals 
 to see the injured people ; he was with difficulty dis- 
 suaded. Of course, Dublin was seething that night, 
 
THE GREAT SUMMER 141 
 
 and it might not have been safe. The next day and the 
 next Lady Aberdeen came to the Exhibition in mourning, 
 looking pale and sad. She had seen the injured people, 
 and her heart was always full of sympathy for the poor. 
 I thought she never looked more beautiful than that 
 day in her deep mourning, the beautiful pearl ear-rings 
 the one note of light in her sombre costume. 
 
 That ill-fated Sunday gave the Exhibition its first 
 blow. Dublin was in a disturbed state, and timid people 
 were afraid to venture in the evening especially into the 
 poor quarters of the town where the Exhibition was 
 situated. 
 
 For some weeks of that summer there had been 
 newspaper paragraphs about a war cloud in the East. 
 They had not perturbed us. War clouds in the East 
 had formed before, only to drift away and disappear. 
 Suddenly this cloud began to darken and thicken till 
 it bade fair to eclipse all Heaven. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 • WAR 
 
 The Sunday after the Bachelor's Walk affair quiet 
 ShankLU was invaded by the sellers of successive editions 
 of the Sunday papers, and even orthodox, church-going 
 Shankill, which shut all its gates on Sundays as a symbol 
 that the Day of Rest was not to be broken, bought the 
 papers. The Cabinet was sitting. What would emerge 
 from its decision ? Peace or War ? As the successive 
 editions of the papers were shouted down aU the quiet 
 roads one of us said that it was like London. 
 
 I had been visiting Mrs. Rowan Hamilton, and she 
 had recalled her being shut, up in Paris in '48. She had 
 left little children at home in Ireland, one of them, the 
 Dowager Marchioness of Dufferin — ^perhaps one ought 
 to say Hariot, Marchioness of Dufferin, since there are 
 now two Dowagers — and she was feverishly anxious to get 
 back to them. There were no passports to be had. A 
 sympathetic official commended her to the only fountain 
 of passports with the adjuration : ' Pleurez, Madame, 
 pleurez beaucoup. II ne pent pas vous empecher.' She 
 must have been a very beautiful young woman at that 
 time. She arrived at the fountain-head. ' Monsieur,' 
 she began, 'il me faut un laissez-passer. Mes petits 
 enfants en Irlande . . .' then she dissolved in floods of 
 tears. She heard the hasty scratching of a pen. The 
 passport was flung at her. ' Allez, Madame, allez au 
 diable ! vous m'agacez. II y a une queue de dames et 
 eUes ne font que pleurer, pleurer toujours.' 
 
 On the Sunday morning I had had a letter from Lord 
 Aberdeen, who had hitherto been sanguine about the 
 war cloud. 
 
 142 
 
WAR 143 
 
 ' I fear to-morrow will be Black Monday.' But it was 
 Tuesday, the 4th, and his birthday, on which war was 
 declared. 
 
 We were aware of it very soon at the Exhibition and 
 in the Viceregal circle, sooner than we should otherwise 
 have been, because the pleasant young A.D.C.'s who 
 were entertaining at the Dining-Club and making the 
 atmosphere of the Exhibition and the Viceregal Lodge 
 gay with youth, went off one by one ' to an unknown 
 destination.' That phrase frightened one. There are 
 phrases which have an immense sadness, one knows not 
 why. ' We sail to-morrow at dawn,' in a letter of 
 Julian Grenfell's has the same mournful augury. 
 
 They sped away so hastily. Three out of four of the 
 A.D.C.'s — ^two were not to return — were gone within the 
 week ; the other soon followed. The Exhibition became 
 a ghostly place. The gaieties were at an end. Those 
 who stayed were full of the vague fear and depression of 
 the early days of the war. 
 
 The Exhibition is so much associated with Lord and 
 Lady Aberdeen, and we were so much there in those 
 days — I had a week as president of the tea-gardens, 
 during which I sat and looked on at the efficient ones 
 doing the work — ^that the war affected us most at that 
 time through their circle. Everybody tried to bear up 
 bravely against the gloom. It was impossible. Shine 
 the sun never so warmly cold fear knocked at one's 
 heart. 
 
 There were functions still — ^robbed of all their life and 
 gaiety. One Saturday afternoon the Lord Lieutenant 
 distributed medals to the crew of a lifeboat — or was it 
 a fisher-crew ? — ^who had accomplished a very gallant 
 rescue of shipwrecked sailors. Before the function we 
 had sat down in the covered stand from which the 
 Viceroy was to speak. To us came a woman of the 
 people, not Irish, I think — ^perhaps the English wife of 
 a soldier, with a little boy called Tommy who had a sniff. 
 English children favour the sniff more than Irish. 
 
 ' Can me 'n Tommy sit 'ere by you ? ' she asked affably. 
 
144 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 ' I suppose you can till the Viceregal party arrives,' we 
 answered. 
 
 She edged a little nearer, with an intention of con- 
 versation. 
 
 ' You an' me an' Tommy can stay anyhow tiU the nobs 
 turn us out,' she said. ' I am tired of traipsin' round 
 this 'ere Exhibition.' 
 
 The incident gave me but a sickly amusement. 
 Everything was sickly in those days. 
 
 Meantime Mr. Redmond had made his famous offer 
 of the Volunteers, and they were in high favour with 
 loyal Unionists. I am not sure, in Shankill at least and 
 the surrounding districts, that the favour was without 
 reservations. I do not think there were reservations 
 in the mind of Colonel Erck who drilled the Shankill 
 Volunteers every Sunday afternoon — 3. sufficiently start- 
 ling fact in itself in Irish Protestant Shankill — ^but then 
 the Ercks had lived in England, which broadens the mind 
 of the Anglo-Irish. It has been known, indeed, to make 
 violent Irish patriots of them. But I imagine that a 
 good many people thought Colonel Erck should have 
 waited to see. Some public-school and Sandhurst 
 boys drilled the Volunteers, but in our district I 
 think our two boys were the only ones of their class 
 who joined the ranks of the Volunteers and were drilled 
 with them. 
 
 One Sunday we went to see the drilling. It was a 
 rather pathetic difficulty that they could not keep the 
 old men out. Neither could they keep the small boys, 
 but they were easier to dispose of. The Volunteers had 
 had old soldiers to drill diem up to this time. Now 
 the professional instructors had been called up — greatly 
 to the improvement of the language — ^and voluntary i^- 
 structors were in request. For just a brief period the 
 Volunteers were fashionable. 
 
 It did not last very long. One day a neighbour at 
 Shankill said to me of Mr. Redmond's offer — ' if he 
 meant it.' I thought it was a mean and unworthy sus- 
 picion, but I fear that when his contract proved beyond 
 
WAR 145 
 
 his power to fulfil a good many people went back to that 
 way of looking at it. 
 
 One of these days, going up to town we ran up against 
 Willie Redmond at Harcourt Street Station. I had not 
 seen him for many years, I think not since the old 
 Parnellite days — ^more than twenty golden years ago — 
 but he was not appreciably changed. He had written 
 me a most kind and charming letter about my Twenty- 
 Five Tears, ignoring or magnanimously forgetting the 
 fact that I had offended the Party some years before 
 by something I had written in the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 Nothing could exceed the warmth of his greeting. 
 He told us a good many things about the war which it is 
 too soon to publish. We promised to spend a day at 
 his house at Delgany when he returned from England ; 
 he was crossing that night : but it did not come off, and 
 we never saw him again. 
 
 These were the terrible days of the Retreat from 
 Mons. There was a day when the Judge stood and 
 talked with us outside our gate. We looked into each 
 other's faces, panic-stricken. Liege of the impenetrable 
 forts had fallen : Namur had fallen. ' They will be in 
 Paris to-day or to-morrow,' said the Judge. 
 
 The newspapers said that the Retreat was ' strategi- 
 cal ' — ^blessed word ! Lord Aberdeen was very gloomy 
 one day I met him at the Exhibition, but a boy-soldier 
 who had taken the place of the A.D.C.'s we remembered, 
 while he waited for an injured knee to recover — ^he, too, 
 was to fall in action — ^was very dogmatic as to its being 
 of no importance. That very day the Irish husband of 
 a German wife whispered into my ear — ^while the young 
 A.D.C. cheerfully distributed the hot cakes intended for 
 their Excellencies' tea ; it was as well, for they never 
 came — ^the tale of the Russians — ^45,000 he said — ^who 
 had landed at Aberdeen that very day. I brought that 
 news home joyfully. How we clung to the Russian 
 myth ! To be sure so many people had seen them ! 
 And how vexed we were when people began to say there 
 were no Russians at all, and to explain away the myth. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 That was the worst time of all — ^the few weeks when 
 one went dutifully to the Exhibition to give what help 
 one could, though the soul had departed out of the place 
 and everything was dead. It was as though some miasma 
 came out of the old walls and poisoned one. The tea- 
 gardens, which had been so pretty with the plashing 
 fountain and the painted trellis of the walls, were worst 
 of aU. One siinf)ly could not lift up one's heart there. 
 I suppose it must have been a little courtyard of the old 
 Lineiihall between high buildings. The blank windows 
 of the Dining-Club looked down upon the tea-tables. 
 The band played and the fountain plashed, and the 
 pretty girls served the scant stream of customers, and 
 one's heart was as heavy as lead. 
 
 It was not so bad when one went home. I began then 
 a sort of journal of the war, to which I gave fanciful 
 names. When I was writing it I must have done it self- 
 consciously, with an eye on posterity ; that is my im- 
 pression looking back upon it. It might be very interest- 
 ing if it were dug up, say, in 2014, that is, if there are 
 not myriads like it. At first one was tremendously 
 interested fn everything about the war. One copied out 
 and got typed even the most unimportant letters from 
 the Front, and pasted in scrap-books the letters that 
 were printed in the Times and other papers. After a 
 while we gave up all that. The newspapers printed no 
 more letters. The war is colossal in aU things. It has 
 been arid is prodigious in its pen-driving. 
 
 Looking back on the Notes now — ^I decided, after 
 many attempts at a title, to call it ' A Woman's Notes 
 of the Great War ' — I find it intensely depressing. The 
 prophecies that never came true : the rumours that were 
 so soon dissipated : perhaps, above aU, the fact that 
 these were written down in ignorance of how the war 
 should still be dragging on, slaying and torturing, after 
 three and a half years had gone by, makes the reading 
 of these notes a dreary business. 
 
 Let me get back from their futilities to a tale Augustine 
 Henry told me. Some time in the July of 191 3 he 
 
WAR 147 
 
 accompanied a friend abroad. They had many plans. 
 Among otJier things they were to spend a week-end with 
 the French owner of a great nursery garden on the 
 Frontier, not far from Metz, the grounds and planta- 
 tions of which ran down to the railway-line. Arriving 
 at Metz station of a Sunday morning they were amazed 
 by the size of the station yard, still more by what it 
 contained. In the enormous space were miles of trans- 
 port wagons and trains, enough to convey an army, great 
 numbers of guns, machine and howitzers, long rows of 
 motor-buses ; everything in the highest state of efficiency, 
 ready, he said, at ten minutes' notice. Some huge mili- 
 tary manoeuvres were in progress, and in order to reach 
 the local line which would take them to their destination, 
 they were obliged to go to a small platform at the far end 
 of the station, good enough for civilians, being elbowed 
 and pushed aside on their progress there by swagger- 
 ing German militarism, obviously in an insolent mood. 
 Arrived at the nurseryman's house, the Sunday quiet- 
 ness was interrupted by the incessant noises of war. 
 Aeroplanes were flying over the house aU night, with at 
 least one Zeppelin. AU night long military trains 
 thundered by. The noise was diabolical. They said 
 to their host, ' It is the mobilisation, the manoeuvres, is 
 it not ? ' He answered in a whisper, ' Messieurs, c'est 
 la guerre ! ' The insolence of the Germans everywhere 
 was amazing. They held their breath till they had left 
 Metz behind. Augustine Henry added that the same 
 thing was going on all along the Frontier. He reported 
 the matter when he went back to London, and was told 
 that the Government was well aware of these pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 He told also how, in July of that year, 19 14, he had sat 
 beside a lady at lunch in the house at Brussels of a high 
 Belgian official, when she had made bitter complaint 
 about her son's having been called up. Augustine 
 Henry, perhaps because of his long residence in China, 
 has a way infinitely leisurely. He is imperturbable. 
 ' Madame,' he said, ' you do not seem to know what is 
 
148 THE YEARS Of THE SHADOW 
 
 about to befall your country,' and so set out to enlighten 
 her. His host thanked him afterwards. ' These people 
 are our despair,' he said. ' They will not beUeve, will 
 not jeahse.' 
 
 Augustine Henry added that his host on that occasion 
 was a member afterwards of the Commission which 
 reported to America on German atrocities in Belgium. 
 Thereupon I asked him if there was any truth in the 
 story, so widely beUeved at the time, about the chopping- 
 ofi of Belgian babies' hands. It was as much as friend- 
 ship was worth with a great many people to express any 
 incrediility. Some men may have beheved the story, 
 but all the women did. When I asked him the question 
 a lady at the table began to assure us vehemently that 
 the tales were true. ' A cousin of mine in London has 
 two refugee Belgian children, both with their hands 
 cut off.' 
 
 Augustine Henry waved her away with his imper- 
 turbable good humour. 
 
 ' I sat by a Cabinet Minister at dinner the other 
 night in London,' he said, ' and I asked him that 
 question, " Are these stories true or are they not r " 
 He answered : '* So far as we can ascertain, there is not 
 a word of truth in them. We have sifted the reports 
 thoroughly, sending an official to any place where such 
 children were reported to be. We have not found a 
 single instance." ' 
 
 Another evening Augustine Henry talked of the Navy 
 and its patrol of the seas. He told us of the Alabama^ 
 which in the days of the Civil War, drove American 
 trade with the West off the seas — ^for all' time, he said. 
 There had been a very considerable trade in tea between 
 America and China which the Alabama destroyed, once 
 and for ever. He told us, to illustrate the immensit}- 
 and lonehness of the seas which the Navy had to patrol, 
 ' I once travelled between Yokohama and San Francisco, 
 and on the whole journey we never saw a sail or a funnel : 
 it was one vast emptiness. The Une by which I travelled 
 had two boats running each way weekly. I said to the 
 
WAR 149 
 
 captain that it was a queer thing we had never sighted 
 a ship. He answered : " I 've travelled between these 
 ports for twenty years, backwards and forwards, and in 
 all that time I 've never sighted a vessel." That was, 
 of course, once he had got away from the harbour.' 
 
 One of these days I sat beside Frank Sheehy Skeffington 
 in a Dublin tramcar. Like many people I had an affec- 
 tion for him, he was so indomitable, such a lighter, and 
 yet so gentle. I remembered his facing a yelling anti- 
 Suffrage crowd with the remark that he was pleased to 
 have met the Ancient Order of Hoohgans, and how, 
 disguised as a priest, he had slipped into the Asquith, 
 meeting at the DubHn Theatre Royal bent on heckling 
 the Premier that night of all nights when the usually 
 amiable Dublin crowd was dangerous, the night of the 
 hunting of the women. 
 
 We talked of the war, and the people about us listened ; 
 he was a Dublin character. Of course, he was a thorough- 
 going pacifist ; he accepted literally : ' I^e who takes the 
 sword shall perish by the sword,' and abhorred bloodshed 
 and violence of any kind. 
 
 I answered him : ' I was once as keen as you that war 
 should cease, till a distinguished naval officer asked me 
 one day when I was talking Norman Angell : " But if 
 you disarm how are you to keep out the barbarous 
 nations ? " ' That remark had made me think. 
 
 ' Oh, but,' the little man responded, ' that difficulty 
 could be met by an extended system of Frontier police.' 
 
 Before I could do more than gasp the tram stopped at 
 my destination. If I had foreseen the future I might 
 have gone a bit further with him. 
 
 That autumn we had a fillip we badly needed in the 
 appointment of my husband to the Resident Magistracy. 
 The vacant post was in the West of Ireland. Lord 
 Aberdeen in his letter offering the appointment said : 
 ' I hope the place will not be too uncongenial for the 
 present.' Our kind friend went out of office, and we 
 have spent going on for four years in the West. But 
 they have not been wasted years, I cannot imagine 
 
150 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 what they would have meant to me, solitary as they 
 proved to be, if I had not been occupied incessantly 
 and with engrossing work, if I had not believed that I 
 was sent there for a purpose. 
 
 My husband's station was Castlebar. I went down 
 to see him settled in, and I felt that it was the end of 
 the world and beyond. After a few days I returned to 
 Dublin, where Lwas to stay for a few months till the 
 term of years for which we had our Shanldll house had 
 expired. Castlebar was really not an uncheerful place. 
 There would have been society, and I should have 
 given mortal ofiFence by not keeping up with it. But 
 there is a terrible place called ManuUa Junction, before 
 you reach Castlebar, where the train sits in the middle 
 of the bogs as though it never meant to go on again. 
 Once you pass Athlone on the Midland-Great-Western 
 Railway of Ireland, you think you have arrived at 
 Ultima Thule and the Back o' Beyant ; when you come 
 to Manulla Junction you are sure of it. 
 
 I accompanied my husband to Kiltimagh (pronounced 
 Kul-cheemauch), his first court, and I waited at the 
 parish priest's house. That is the dehghtful thing about 
 Ireland, that you can always walk into the parish priest's 
 house and make your own of it. Father Denis O'Hara, 
 who is a notable priest, and a member of the Congested 
 Districts Board, came in to find me seated in his room, 
 correcting the typescript of my latest novel. He sat 
 down and talked to me about many things. Two of his 
 subjects were Mr. George Wyndham and Sir David 
 Harrel, both of them among his great admirations. 
 Father Denis is a remarkable man. Very soon after I 
 met him I discovered a bundle of letters from Bee 
 Walshe, whom I wrote about in Twenty-Five Tears. 
 They were dated some time in 1882. My eye fell on this 
 passage : 
 
 ' I have just come back from a place called Kiltimagh, 
 Kitty. You won't know anything about it, but it is so 
 wild and barbarous a place that we talk here of " Going 
 from Ireland tb Kiltimagh." ' 
 
WAR 151 
 
 Father Denis has altered all that. The curfew has 
 been rung at 9 o'clock every night since he has been P. P. 
 of Kiltimagh, and the honest people have gone home to 
 their own firesides. But there is unrest in the air. 
 How much longer will his people yield him unquestioning 
 obedience ? 
 
 He was the first of the good Western priests who were 
 to prove almost our only society in Mayo. 
 
 I had a long wait that day at Kiltimagh, the new R. M. 
 not having yet learnt to get through his courts expedi- 
 tiously. All day long Father Denis came in and out — 
 he is a tremendously busy person — ^pressing hospitality on 
 me every time, staying a few moments for a talk before 
 going off again. 
 
 As I travelled back to town I met another notable 
 Western priest. Canon Keavency of Charlestown. He, 
 too, talked of George Wyndham and Sir David Harrel. 
 He said of the latter, who had been a R. M. in Mayo 
 during the worst of the wild times of the Land League, 
 that the people he sentenced were obliged to him, he 
 did it so beautifully. He mentioned also that when Sir 
 David was transferred, during those very same years, to 
 the Chief Commissionership of the Dublin Metropolitan 
 Police, he was played to the station by the Land League 
 band. 
 
 All who had loved Mr. Wyndham had sore hearts in 
 those days, since Percy Wyndham, beautiful and young, 
 had fallen in the second month of the war, and he was 
 his father's only child. One was glad then that George 
 Wyndham had not lived for such suffering. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LAST DAYS AT SHAN KILL 
 
 That autumn and winter one thought and talked of 
 nothing but the War. We were a household of women 
 at Clarebeg, since one boy was keeping his father 
 company in the west, and the other was at Shrewsbury. 
 The elder boy, just seventeen, had attempted to enUst 
 at the beginning of the war, but we had vetoed it since 
 he was not strong. Every day Pam went to her convent 
 school in Dubhn, leaving about 9 o'clock and returning 
 about 2.30 unless I had business or pleasure in DubUn, 
 when she met me at Harcourt Street. We used to get 
 up at 7 o'clock, while it was still dark, get out for a walk 
 as the morning mists were just beginning to roll them- 
 selves away, or while the frost yet lay on the fields and 
 the dead leaves of the tree-hung road. If we were early 
 the bakers' carts were still exchanging their bread at the 
 top of the road. That was how we knew the time 
 because, although I had possessed seyeral ornamental 
 no-time-keepers, I had always gone by the pubhc clocks 
 or a distant ' hooter,' or the bakers' carts, or some such 
 thing. 
 
 We used to have our walk, and talk to any one we met 
 who seemed interesting, and come back hungry for 
 breakfast, after which the little figure would go off up 
 the road to the station, and I would work tiU lunch- 
 time. 
 
 We were often at the Lodge that autumn and winter, 
 and we went about a good deal with Lord and Lady 
 Aberdeen. We made out a certain amount of gaiety 
 despite the Shadow of the War. When we did not stay 
 at die Lodge we often came home by the last train, and 
 
LAST DAYS AT SHANKILL 153 
 
 that excellent railway porter, Mr. Grogan, a genial 
 person who was a great favourite with the ShankiUites, 
 would lock up the station, take his lantern, and see us 
 home down the dark road. Mr. Grogan was a charming 
 person and well deserved his promotion to be a station- 
 master, but I 'm glad I was not there when it happened, 
 since it took him away. They were such friendly people. 
 Mr. Doyle, the station-master, was a fine old Irish gentle- 
 man. He had a fatherly way with every one. If you 
 offered him gold or a note when you purchased your rail- 
 way ticket, he put it back gently but firmly into your hand, 
 gave you your ticket and coppers for your first tram 
 journey, and told you to pay him when you came back. 
 
 His son was killed in the war, and the dear old man's 
 blitheness was killed too. Things are not the same now 
 when one goes back. 
 
 Mr. Grogan had been one of the first to welcome us 
 to Shankill. I believe we met him on the very same 
 occasion when an almost fantastic gentleman, by his 
 dress a Dublin artisan, stopped us at the railway bridge 
 and asked if we would accept a rose from a small bunch 
 he was carrying. Dear .Shankill — ^it was all sweet and 
 kind, or nearly all. 
 
 Once or twice we had, instead of Mr. Grogan's escort, 
 our neighbour, Donald Fletcher, who had come down 
 in the last train with us. He was a beautiful boy, tall 
 and splendid-looking. He was killed in a bombing acci- 
 dent in Salonika last year. 
 
 Ah, they were good times ! We had our little adven- 
 tures, all of them pleasant. One rimy winter morning 
 we talked with a strange R.I.C. man who was guarding 
 the viaduct by the Bride's Glen, sweet spot ! All rail- 
 way bridges and waterworks had their guards in those 
 days. Dublin Corporation had just expressed to the 
 citizens its sorrow at any annoyance caused to them by 
 the erroneous report of the Roundwood Reservoir having 
 been poisoned. Our R.I.C. man was from the North 
 and dour, but a Papist and a Nationalist. They are all 
 more or less dour in the North. He yvzs very bitter 
 
154 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 about the Ulster Orangemen. ' They have so long had 
 aU the plums in the garden that they cannot bear the 
 other man to look over the wall.' It takes an Ulsterman 
 to stand up to an Ulsterman. He would have been a 
 match, man for man, of the most obdurate Orangeman. 
 
 Then there was the young, shy, working man in the 
 train who, nevertheless, had a good deal to say for him- 
 self, with whom we discussed the War. He was not 
 pro-war. He was not pro-German. He gave one the 
 impression of waiting to see. After he had left us at a 
 wayside station he came back to say : ' Von Bernhardi 
 says that war is the medicine of the world.' 
 
 There was the R.A.M.C. man who wanted to get into 
 the fighting line, and spoke of himself disparagingly as 
 only a Ram Corps man. He was not very young, and 
 had served through the South African War. ShanMIl 
 was but half-an-hour by rail from DubHn. It was 
 wonderful how many discussions we managed to get 
 into these half-hours. One of the Ram Corps man's 
 stories was as foUows : ' During the South African War 
 I was travelling down to the base. There was a Canadian 
 trooper in the wagon with me. It was the time of year 
 when the nights are very cold on the veldt. He asked 
 me if I had a blanket and I said no, that I had my great- 
 coat and it was warm enough. He said " You 'U find 
 that it will not be warm enough," and as he said it he 
 tpre his sleeping bag in two and gave me half. It kept 
 the Ufe in me during the night, and, when I awoke in 
 the grey dawn, I saw him lying on the floor of the 
 wagon fast asleep, wrapped in the other half of the bag. 
 I laid my half over him, for I had reached my destina- 
 tion, and I went away very sad, feeling I should not see 
 him again.' The next time I saw the Ram Corps man 
 he had got a commission in the Royal Irish Regiment, 
 so he had his desire. 
 
 ' Tliis war 's affectin' every wan,' said a car-driver to 
 us one day. ' How does it affect you ? ' we asked. 
 ' Och, sure, me son was out last night drivin' wan o' 
 thim coast-guard min to Bray.' 
 
LAST DAYS AT SHANKILL 155 
 
 Some one told us that he travelled in a train with two 
 Reservists and their wives to Limerick Junction. The 
 two ladies were very noisy in their grief. They were 
 working up to a final demonstration when they alighted 
 at the Junction, only to find the troop-train gone. 
 Immediately their humour changed and they began to 
 abuse the men. ' What 's the matter wid you ? ' asked 
 one of the ill-used husbands. ' A few minits ago you were 
 bawlin' at the thought o' partin' wid me, an' now I 'm 
 wid ye still, here ye are throwin' hard words at me ! ' 
 ' If I was bawlin' itself,' returned the lady, ' I had the 
 comfort of it that I 'd have your allowance ; but look at 
 me now ! The divil an allowance I 'm likely ever to see 
 at all, at all.' 
 
 One of these autumn afternoons we had a wire from 
 Sir Horace Plunkett asking us to dinner, saying he would 
 send his motor for us. We found among the guests 
 our old friend, E. F. Knight. He took me in to dinner. 
 He had just returned from a visit to the Grand Fleet. 
 He said they are very cheerful, and perpetually watchful. 
 He had seen the departure on their ill-fated voyage of 
 the Ahoukir, Hogue, and Cressy. 
 
 One of his stories was about Lord SaUsbury and a 
 settling-up in which a small nation — ^Montenegro, was 
 it ? — ^wanted a seaport. Lord Salisbury studied a map 
 and discovered Cattaro — ^E. F. K. explained the line of 
 the coast to me, drawing diagrams with his one hand 
 on the table-cloth — a tiny bit of seaboard wedged in 
 between Turkey and Austria. Lord Salisbury sent for 
 the Turkish Ambassador. ' Will the Sublime Porte 
 agree to Montenegro having Cattaro ? ' The Ambas- 
 sador bowed : the Sublime Porte was quite agreeable. 
 ' That 's settled then,' said Lord Salisbury, well pleased 
 to have got one thing off his mind. Later, when he was 
 explaining the dispositions to the Austrian Ambassador, 
 he said, ' Turkey is willing to cede Cattaro to the 
 Montenegrins.' ' Oh, but we are not,' said the Austrian 
 Ambassador : ' Cattaro is ours.' 
 
 Sir Frederick Treves had saved Knight's life at the 
 
156 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 expense of his arm. E. F. K. had told us the story in 
 our London days. It was after the battle of Belmont. 
 Antiseptics and anaesthetics alike had run out : it was a 
 ghastly business. He lay among the wounded in a 
 hospital tent. Gangrene had set in among the wounded. 
 Treves entered the tent and passed from one bed to 
 the other, shaking'his head. By Knight's bed he paused. 
 ' Have you ever had chloroform ? ' he asked. Knight 
 opened an eye. ' Several times. If you don't mind, the 
 
 brand I prefer is 2 .' ' There 's hope for this fellow,' 
 
 said Treves, taking off his coat and turning up his shirt 
 sleeves. ' We '11 have that arm off.' 
 
 He said that the Indian troops would foUow the white 
 officers anywhere. ' Our officers say " Go ! " ' (I 've 
 forgotten the Hindoo words.) ' Your ofiicers say 
 " come ! " ' an Indian soldier had said to him. 
 
 Augustine Henry, when he talked of the EngHsh as 
 makiag the best travellers in the world, the most friendly 
 and helpful, added this bit of observation : ' Continental 
 peoples have a code of manners towards their own 
 women. They have none towards the women of other 
 nations.' 
 
 One day Sir David Harrel came to see us, and talking of 
 the different conditions in this war as compared with the 
 Crimean War through which his brother had fought, he 
 said : ' In the Crimea the condition of the AUies, French 
 and Enghsh, was most wretched. The transports with 
 food were held up at Sebastopol till a violent gale came 
 and blew them out to sea. In the bitter cold of the 
 Russian winter the men's clothes hung upon them in 
 rags. When a ship-load of boots arrived from England, 
 it was found that they were aU for the one foot. The 
 men's feet were frost-bitten and gangrened, and there 
 were, of course, neither antiseptics nor anaesthetics. 
 The trenches and the bodies of the men crawled with 
 vermin.' 
 
 Christmas, 1914, came and went. We had not much 
 longer to stay at Shanldll and we were growing rather 
 nervous. There was talk of invasion. The servants 
 
LAST DAYS AT SHANKILL 157 
 
 were terribly alarmed by the flashlights and the sound 
 of guns out at sea. Two or three times we left them to 
 their fate and the dogs, and went off to the Lodge. They 
 had not even the support of Gregory, the gardener, who 
 had become infected by the military spirit and carried 
 his spade as a rifle when he was not using it to give the 
 military salute. 
 
 One afternoon I was sitting in the library when 
 
 Sergeant B of the R.LC. was announced. He came 
 
 in, affable, but with a portentous air. The speech rolled 
 from his tongue richly. 
 
 ' 1 have been visitin' the residents of Shankill,' he 
 began, with the air of one who has learnt a lesson off by 
 heart. His eyes were fixed on the wall above the fire- 
 place. 'I am insthructed by the military authorities 
 to inform ye that ye are to hold yourselves in readiness 
 to leave your house at a minit's notice and to proceed 
 across the mountains be vehicle, motor, or otherwise, 
 or on foot, to a place to be indicated to ye. Before 
 departure ye are to destroy any stores ye possess that 
 may be of value to the inimy. What cattle ye have ye 
 are to drive over the mountains before ye. Any hay 
 or corn ye possess must be desthroyed. If ye have a 
 motor-car it is to be conshumed be fire before ye start 
 or we will do it for ye.' 
 
 He paused for breath, and I suggested hens. He 
 stopped to think and decided. 
 
 ' Hins. Ye may abandon hins. They 're wild little 
 divils to dhrive. Like as not they 'd evade the inimy's 
 capture. Now there are three forrums the danger may 
 take. There is the danger from a bombardmint : there 
 is the danger from an airship or Zeppelin raid : and 
 there is the danger of an inimy landin'. From all these 
 dangers it is my duty to protect the people of Shankill. 
 Now, ma'am, I do not wish you to be onduly alarmed 
 by my intilligence : I hope it will not be me duty to 
 warn ye, but if it is I thrust it may not be at twelve 
 to-night.' 
 
 I thought of : ' Pray it be not on the Sabbath,' 
 
158 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 ' But if that is me painful duty, it will be done be me 
 and me min with the greatest possible considheration 
 consistent with duty : ye may be sure of that, ma'am. 
 But in case ye 've got to step out of your beds and go, 
 I 've ordhered the church beUs to ring be way of 
 warnin'. You approve of that manner of warnin' the 
 people in case of a sudden alarrum ? 'Tis well to be 
 prepared. The«route I 've marked out for the inhabit- 
 ants of ShankUl is be way of Ballycorus and KUternan 
 across the mountains to Rathfarnham ' 
 
 I saw myself of a snowy night ' proceeding ' by way 
 of Ballycorus and Kilternan across the mountains to 
 Rathfarnham. Perhaps I might do it — with the Ger- 
 mans behind me. 
 
 The sergeant went on breathlessly : ' Th' inhabitants 
 of Ballybrack, be order, are to proceed be way of the 
 Bride's GHn and follow the route marked out for th' 
 inhabitants of ShankiU. Them 's me insthructions. 
 The ringin' of the church beUs in case of sudden alarrum 
 was me own invintion. Don't show more Ughts than 
 ye can help. In the case of Uve stock ' 
 
 I was afraid he was beginning it all again, and I hastily 
 asked him if he would like a drink. 
 
 ' Thank you, ma'am,' he said gratefully, ' taUdn 's 
 dhry work. Well, just an idea, a sketch, not to give 
 offince, what I once heard described as a soup-song. I 
 must be gettin' on me way. I only hope nothing I 've 
 said wiU alarrum ye ! Nothin' may come of it, but I 
 have me orders from the miHtary authorities as to 
 the manner in which ye are to proceed.' 
 
 It was really no joke, though I laughed when the 
 sergeant had gone. By the way, to explain the paucity 
 of our Uve stock, we had been getting rid of things with 
 a view to departure. We had given away our old cob, 
 and the Shetland, Puck, the fastest and wildest of Uttle 
 ponies, had followed his master to the West of Ireland. 
 We had had goats. The inhabitants of ShankUl had a 
 pleasing way of letting their goats go wild on the moun- 
 tains when they were done milking. When you re- 
 
LAST DAYS AT SHANKILL 159 
 
 claimed your goat you usually found a kid in addition, 
 but some people did not reclaim their goats, so that 
 there was quite a wild herd on the mountains. 
 
 Some time in the preceding summer our goat, who had 
 gone to the mountains, arrived home unexpectedly. It 
 was a Sunday, and we heard the most tremendous 
 hubbub. A boy went to the door and discovered the 
 whole juvenile population of Shankill surrounding our 
 goat and a majestic patriarch of a billy-goat. 
 
 ' We met her walldn' down from Katty Goliher ' (a 
 popular corruption of our special mountain's name), ' an' 
 we knew it was yer goat an' we hooshed her home to 
 ye,' they cried in chorus. 
 
 Largesse — ^the American poet, Joaquin Miller, when 
 he visited London, used to throw six coppers to be 
 scrambled for by street urchins : he called it largesse — 
 being given to the extent of fourpence, was gratefully 
 received. It was no benefit to us to have the goat back, 
 but we had to reward such obvious goodwill. 
 ' Will ye have th' ould billy as well, sir ? ' 
 ' Certainly not : the billy doesn't belong to us.' 
 ' Ye could have him thrown in, sir, for the fourpence.' 
 So the spokesman of the crowd. This handsome offer 
 not being accepted, the whole wild little crowd rushed 
 off after the billy-goat to ' hoosh ' him up the moun- 
 tains again. 
 
 A few days later our goat went off to the society of 
 the mountain. We did not attempt to reclaim her, so 
 that was the end of that live stock. 
 
 We need not have left Shankill till May but we longed 
 for family reunion, and Lord Aberdeen was going out, and 
 we thought that Dublin would be terribly flat and dull 
 without their Excellencies. So we began to pull up our 
 tent-pegs. We did it rather unsatisfactorily, for at the 
 last moment, when I should have been the presiding 
 genius of the move, we went off to the Lodge for a few 
 days, whereby, I am told, numberless things were for- 
 gotten and lost. I can only say it was worth it. If it 
 had not been that they were going we might have had 
 
i6o THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 misgivings when we stepped Westward. We had none. 
 Besides, we were coming back in a fortnight for the 
 going-out. We might just as well have waited where 
 we were. I can't imagine why we did not. The 
 journey into the West was long and expensive. But 
 it would be something, after the settling-in, to look 
 forward to the return. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE COUNTY OF MAYO 
 
 Because of the absence of a suitable house at Castlebar 
 my husband had been transferred to Claremorris, where 
 for some weeks he had been awaiting us enjoying the 
 comforts of a West of Ireland hotel. It was perhaps to 
 make his lot happier that we had cut . off short the 
 delights of our ShankiU life. I have always faced every 
 ' move ' with a high heart. When people said to me, 
 ' But how will you endure life in Mayo ? ' I had answered 
 that we loved the country. When I was told that we 
 should have no society I had an arrogant reservation in 
 my own mind. We should find society. 
 
 Well, if there is an uglier place on earth than a West 
 of Ireland country town, I do not know it. Mayo has 
 beautiful cottages through the county, but the towns- 
 people have not yet developed that civic feeling which 
 makes the mediaeval towns so beautiful. Claremorris 
 is entirely without corporate dignity ; it takes no colour 
 from the lives of its inhabitants. Nothing greyer, 
 colder, less attractive could well be imagined. It is 
 perhaps because it is a big junction through which 
 people are always passing that it gives one the impression 
 of a collection of temporary buildings — ' shacks ' — such 
 as might be flung down anyhow beside the railway Hne of 
 an American mining district. About the middle of the 
 main street are a couple of ruined houses, windowless, 
 with broken roofs, covered heavily in the deep green 
 moss of the humid West, sagging towards the street. 
 It is apparently nobody's business to remove them. 
 
 The first sight of Claremorris, especially if it is a wet 
 
 L 
 
i62 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 day, is profoundly depressing. You pity the people who 
 have to live in such a place. How dreary their Uves must 
 be ! But there you are wrong. There is a deal of gay, 
 vivacious, highly coloured life, in Claremorris as in other 
 Western towns. They are called towns, and they are 
 towns by right of the amount of trading and the money 
 that passes in them. Beyond that diey have hardly 
 the dignity of a decent village. 
 
 But the people — oh, that is quite another matter. 
 The people enjoy themselves. There is more gaiety 
 in one of these ramshackle Irish towns than in many 
 beautiful English county towns. They have dances, 
 concerts, plays ; they are extraordinarily gifted. Beauti- 
 ful voices, dramatic and musical talent, hang on every 
 tree. Sometimes one goes out from amongst us and 
 becomes famous ; but many do not chose to go. The 
 West is a very close borough. The West only cares 
 for the West, accepts the West, understands the West ; 
 when it is minded for a change it goes to the greater 
 West across the ocean, only to return before it dies. 
 
 The gifts await development. Just recently a friendly 
 musical parson had the idea of estabUshing a Choral 
 Society in Claremorris and asked for voices. They came, 
 more than he could handle. After a fortnight's training 
 the choir took part most creditably in a concert. 
 
 After the concert was a dance. There were not 
 wanting swallow-tails and evening dresses. There was 
 abundance of taste. 
 
 All over the West there are miniature Abbey Theatres. 
 I have not seen a performance, but I believe the acting is 
 excellent. 
 
 The melancholy aspect of Claremorris and other 
 Western towns is in the eye of the stranger. It is 
 emblematic of the fact that the West shuts her door in 
 your face and puts the key in her pocket, unless you are a 
 bprn Westerner. There are none of the pleasant parleys 
 you have with the peasants elsewhere ; in the South and 
 East, in Donegal, in Connemara, people teU me. Per- 
 haps I have spoken too loosely of the West ; or, is Mayo 
 
THE COUNTY OF MAYO 163 
 
 of the Land League the concentration of this close 
 western spirit which lives to itself and for itself ? 
 
 I can look back to my first day in Mayo with a sort of 
 pity for myself. I had said to the children : ' It may be 
 ramshackle, but it will be, oh, so friendly ! ' It wasn't 
 friendly except for one or two people and the priests, 
 and the nuns, when I gave them a chance. People who 
 wander into the life of Mayo from outside are apt to 
 wear a lost look. 
 
 Sir David Harrel had told us long ago that the Mayo 
 gentry were the most exclusive in Ireland. There were 
 few gentry about Glaremorris. There must always have 
 been few, for there are no houses. The Land League 
 and the Congested Districts Board between them had 
 swept away the gentry. The few who were left were 
 further sifted by the war. Those who remained were at 
 long distances off, beyond reach of anything but a motor. 
 There was hardly a door open to us, a fireside where we 
 could sit down, except the priests' and the doctor's, for 
 the Claremorris doctor and his famUy had touch with 
 literature. Anywhere else in Ireland you would have 
 been on friendly terms with your humbler neighbours. 
 Mayo did not encourage that, except in the case of 
 a few of the old people who had been attached to the 
 vanished gentry. 
 
 Our new abode was not yet ready for us, so for a few 
 days we looked on at the urbanities of Claremorris. 
 Full in view of our sitting-room windows stood a hearse 
 aU day and every day. On the Sunday there was a 
 funeral, and we heard the shrieking of the mourners. 
 The West flaunts its coffins more than other places. 
 There are shop windows full of them in its streets. 
 
 We had arrived on a very fine winter day, with a hint 
 of spring in it. I had such a blithe heart towards the 
 new life that after a meal I insisted on going to see our 
 new home. It was a couple of miles away, and, when we 
 got there, a churlish person would not admit us, although 
 we could see our furniture in stacks in the rooms. On 
 the way back I got drenched, as one only gets drenched in 
 
i64 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Ireland — at least one doesn't in England. I have been 
 drenched many a time since, but I have got acclimatised. 
 It is a saying that Mayo rain does not give cold. But I 
 was not then acclimatised, and I caught one of the worst 
 colds I can remember. All that spring through and for 
 what was left of winter, I suffered from the damp cold, 
 till I became acclimatised. I have sometimes remem- 
 bered, when I have inveigled an invalidish Dublin friend 
 to Mayo in winter with assurances of its extraordinarily 
 bracing climate, and have become suddenly aware of the 
 pinched blueness of her face as she stretched hands to 
 the magnificent turf and wood fires — ^for we have that 
 glorious mixture of fuel : it is one of the compensations. 
 
 The day after we got into our new home, while we were 
 tackling the problein of fitting our furniture into a 
 partly furnished house. Mayo showed us what she could 
 do in the way of weather. Hail, rain, sleet, snow, and 
 a gale from the Atlantic, flooded the haU when the door 
 was opened to admit the furniture from yet another 
 van, and did the best imitation of a banshee I have ever 
 heard in one of the big upstairs bedrooms. Fortunately 
 it was not at the dead hour of night I heard it first : even 
 in daylight I required the confidence imparted by the 
 presence of the man in charge of the removing — a person 
 of some six-foot-four, and brawny in proportion. There 
 must have been a hidden ventilator in the wall of that 
 room, for with the wind in the south-east, it played on 
 
 Something. The banshee-cry began very low down 
 
 and rose to a tortured shriek, died away to a low sobbing 
 and began again. 
 
 I and the remover stared at each other with a wild 
 surmise when it began. It was eldritch, to use a fine 
 expressive Scottish word. Mayo air is certainly not 
 nervy. I often heard that crying afterwards and knew 
 it was a ventilator. 
 
 The R. M. and Toby motored that day to AchiU 
 Sound with the motor half-full of hail and water, un- 
 able to put up the hood because the wind across 
 the bogs would turn over the car. They were already 
 
THE COUNTY OF MAYO 165 
 
 acclimatised. It was a hundred Irish mUes there 
 and back. 
 
 What Carradoyne might have been if one had been 
 permitted to choose one's wall-papers and dispense with 
 the furniture that was not required, I do not know. It 
 was a Georgian house, very pleasant to look at outside, 
 with its long rows of windows swathed in ivy ; and it 
 caught aU the sun when the sun came. Our predecessor 
 had been a great gardener, and when the winter turned 
 to spring there came masses of wallflowers and forget- 
 me-nots and clove pinks under our windows. The place 
 had been beautifully laid out by some one, who had done 
 the Grand Tour apparently. The house stood on a 
 rampart. Yoii descended to the tennis-lawn, surrounded 
 by flowering shrubs, by a few steps ! Below the tennis- 
 lawn stretched the park-like fields, laid out with Italianate 
 groups of stone pines, poplars, and all deciduous trees. 
 The garden was glorious. It seemed dead when we 
 came, but, in time, there sprang up the most lovely 
 herbaceous border, which changed with every change of 
 the seasons. That garden had many charming rurallties, 
 as Mrs. Delany would have said. It was divided into 
 four squares, with deep beds around the waUs as well. 
 Two squares were kitchen garden : the others were 
 lawns. One had a little hazel-grove, where you might 
 pick your nuts. Gnarled apple-trees were in every 
 border, thick-set about their feet with flowers. There 
 were rose-arches to aU the paths. Here, a wide sheet 
 of forget-me-nots stretched under green apple boughs. 
 There, were masses of splendid poppies, of delphinium, 
 borage and anchusa, wonderful for their splendid blues, 
 with sheets of every sort of sweet-smeUing double nar- 
 cissus, and always the background of masses of clove 
 pinks of a beautiful whiteness. 
 
 We found in the house a picture of the herbaceous 
 border which had been very faithfully copied from 
 that in a famous EngHsh garden. When you looked 
 along it, from the gate that admitted to the garden 
 to the gate at the other end, which opened on the 
 
i66 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 orchard, it was splendid, a wild revel of massed, pure 
 colour. 
 
 The garden was high above the house, which was 
 sheltered from the north by a pine-wood. At its lowest 
 part you were on a level with the chimneys of the house, 
 which was bad for the house. I had selected a sUp of a 
 room, with a glass door opening out among the pinks, 
 for my own, had put on a good paper and set up my 
 pretty things. It was dehghtful while the summer 
 lasted — ^tiU the insects came. 
 
 No one had thought of mentioning the insects. There 
 were not only flies — ^in myriads, and with a tiger-like 
 ferocity — ^but there were aU manner of queer bees, the 
 colour of pale honey and very shm, young bees probably, 
 from the ages-old hive in the chimney. There was a 
 certain hedge of Portugal laurel — ^two hedges, in fact — 
 between which one approached the house-door. When 
 it came to August and September you sprinted between 
 those hedges, covering your face. Out came the fhes 
 in a swarm and attacked you. You made for the hall 
 into which they did not foUow you. Perhaps they dis- 
 Hked the smeU of peat. 
 
 The first spring and summer were not so bad. We 
 had a small social circle. And to be sure Pam and I 
 went up in February for the going-out of Lord Aberdeen, 
 and had some days of happiness with a sad close, and we 
 went up again in April when Lady Aberdeen had come 
 back. 
 
 Let me say here how beautiful the atmosphere of the 
 Lodge was in those winter days. It was more than ever 
 a fanuly party, with all the poor young men gone, and 
 very Httle state kept, and only guests who were 
 attached friends. I remember especially the Sundays, 
 We all went ofE in the morning to whatever church we 
 desired. After lunch most people retired to their bed- 
 rooms, some to sleep perhaps, for the Lodge kept late 
 hours — ^I to write by the roaring fire in the pretty room 
 with the abundance of electric Ught. I wrote many 
 letters there, and poems and articles in a most delightfiil 
 
THE COUNTY OF MAYO 167 
 
 freedom. You could have your tea in your bedroom as 
 you could have your breakfast. AH around outside 
 stretched the grounds of the Lodge and the Phoenix 
 Park, with a distant view of the mountains. Dublin 
 was out of sight and hearing. There was not a sound 
 but the measured tread of the sentry outside, and the 
 occasional distant whistle of a train. 
 
 On such days the atmosphere of the Lodge seemed 
 steeped in peace. I don't think I ever enjoyed such 
 happy freedom to do exactly as I pleased, and every- 
 thing pleased me. 
 
 Only once was I disturbed, and that was in the old 
 part of the Lodge, not in the gay, new part which had 
 been built on when King Edward visited Ireland. I had 
 a nightmare in which one of the old Lord-Lieutenants 
 came down out of a picture on the wall and stood by 
 my bed. I jumped up half-awake, or perhaps quite 
 asleep, looking for the electric light. But I could not 
 find it, and aU the furniture came round me and hit me 
 most unfairly. I preferred the gay, new part, with the 
 electric light within reach of your hand and no sugges- 
 tion of ghostliness. 
 
 Lord and Lady Aberdeen used to attend the Service 
 in their Private Chapel at seven o'clock. Afterwards 
 there was dinner, and we talked. There was no music 
 on Sunday evening, or perhaps there was only sacred 
 music. 
 
 That last visit the Lodge was crowded with visitors, 
 on the same errand as ourselves, to see them off. There 
 was too much to do to be sad. All day long and well 
 into the night there were functions of aU sorts, meetings, 
 receptions of deputations, reading of addresses, and so 
 on. There was no time to feel the sadness. 
 
 They were to go on the Saturday — we had been there 
 from Wednesday. There was to be an Investiture at 
 Dublin Castle and a farewell reception, after which 
 they were to make their State exit. Dublin Castle was 
 already a Red Cross Hospital. We had seen it opened 
 before we went into the West. By the way, I had 
 
i68 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 appealed for the hospital in various London papers, 
 Selfridges having given up their advertising space for 
 the purpose. The appeal brought me several donations 
 of ten pounds to found a bed. I had made up with a 
 couple of friends another ten pounds. I handed in the 
 money and the names of the donors to be afiixed to the 
 beds. When it came to the opening ceremony I, of 
 course, could not see my name on any bed, nor did I 
 look for it, for I had given instructions that the com- 
 posite bed was to be named simply the Friends' Bed. 
 But people came to me that day of the opening and said : 
 ' How, generous you have been ! You have endowed so 
 many beds.' And one lady said : ' You extravagant 
 woman ! You told me you were ruined by the war, yet 
 I see your beds all over the place ! ' 
 
 Well, I was simple enough to think that some of my 
 kind donors, who had expressed no special wish with 
 regard to the beds, had written to say that my name 
 should go on them. I had very kind repHes from 
 some whom I thanked, but I think, looking back, that 
 there was a note of embarrassment in the replies. I 
 made one or two efforts to set things right in the re- 
 maining cases — so far as I can remember, only one lady 
 had expressed a definite wish — ^but I suppose nothing 
 was done, and I am stUl looked upon as a generous donor. 
 One lady, who had contributed to the Friends' Bed, 
 never forgave me. I thought her coldness caprice, and 
 didn't bother. But quite suddenly one day, not so long 
 ago, when my thoughts wandered to those days I had 
 an illumination. To that lady, at least, I must seem 
 a monumental fraud. 
 
 I never saw but one bed with my name. I was led 
 to it the last time I visited the Castle Hospital. There 
 was a boy in it who was suffering from trench feet. He 
 must have been out a good while, for I asked him if it 
 was true that when the Expeditionary Force landed the 
 French ladies received them with flowers and kisses. 
 He repUed, ' Not 'arf. Blowin' it were an' rainin' an' 
 a thici fog at 'arf four in the momin'.' The soldier 
 
THE COUNTY OF MAYO 169 
 
 sitting by his bed, who was convalescent, looked at me 
 with bright intelligence and said : ' I 've read lots of 
 your books.' He was a Liverpool boy, with Irish blood 
 in him. 
 
 I leave it to Heaven to sort out that matter of the beds. 
 
 That day of the proposed going-out the rain rained and 
 the wind blew till it rose to a tempest, and at the last 
 moment, because of the people who would stand in the 
 wet streets to see the spectacle, the going-out was post- 
 poned tiU Monday. I have always been glad of that 
 storm. Only the intimates returned to the Lodge. I 
 went off immediately to write an article for something 
 or other about the functions of the week, while the other 
 ladies implored Lady Aberdeen, who was in the last 
 stage of fatigue, to say whether they should stay or go 
 and leave her to a very quiet Sunday. It ended in all 
 staying. 
 
 I was glad I did not miss that last Sunday when, after 
 dinner, Sir Anthony Weldon, the State Steward and 
 Chamberlain, got up and delivered a panegyric of Lord 
 and Lady Aberdeen, saying in simple soldier fashion 
 what ev^ry one felt. Lord Aberdeen responded, making 
 some gentle and touching reference to every guest 
 present. 
 
 I remembered that Sir David Harrel had said that of 
 many Viceroys he had heard speaking, Lord Aberdeen 
 was by far the best speaker. That last evening does 
 not bear talking of. It was dedicated to affection and 
 admiration and the sadness of parting and all the 
 humanities. 
 
 That night after dinner Lord Aberdeen spoke to me 
 about certain things he wanted said some day. I hope I 
 may live to say them. It is as yet too soon. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 1915 
 
 One of those last nights at the Lodge, Sir Neville 
 Wilkinson, Ulster King-at-Arms, who had taken me into 
 dinner, mentioned that the eyes of a man coming out 
 of action were always pale blue. Dark blue, grey, hazel, 
 brown, had aU become pale blue. A film, I suppose. I 
 have seen it drawn suddenly across the very blue eyes 
 of an old man when he heard of disgrace to his son. 
 
 ' No war,' says A. E., ' ever settled a spiritual problem 
 or gave victory to a spiritual ideal.' 
 
 They knew very little about the War at Claremorris. 
 A few days after I arrived there I heard the statement : 
 ' There are submarines in the Irish Sea and eggs are 
 down to one-and-four.' So did Claremorris correlate 
 the things of war. 
 
 In the newspaper shop a very old man used to sit 
 smoking and talking to the customers. He had been in 
 the Connaught Rangers and had fought in the Crimea. 
 He was deaf if any one talked about the magnitude of 
 the War. ' The year '55,' he said, ' was the cowldest 
 any wan remembers here at home. 'Twas worse in the 
 trinches. The Crimayan War was the greatest war the 
 world ever seen.' 
 
 Contrariwise, another very old man, in Castlebar, said 
 to my husband : ' I don't know at aU what God can be 
 doin' to let this war go on. I 'm entratin' an' entratin' 
 Him day an' night to put a stop to it, an' stiU it goes on. 
 It could not be that He isn't hstenin' to me. Ah, well, 
 sure. He knows His own business best.' 
 
 The old men are often very deHghtful. They and the 
 old women have kept the Irish graces which have aU 
 
I9IS 171 
 
 but vanished from a younger generation. They are very 
 quaint. Dr. Conor Maguire of Claremorris told me 
 that an old man had said to him : ' I do often be think- 
 ing of John the Baptist, an' what a quare thing it was that 
 he was the friend of th' Almighty, an' yet for all that 
 th' Almighty would let his head be cut off and put on 
 a dish. Th' Almighty does quare things sometimes. 
 Why wouldn't He ? Sure, there 's no wan to hinder 
 Him.' 
 
 There was a delightful old fellow, Johnny Ansbro, who 
 used to drive us to Mass on Sunday mornings when we 
 first came. He talked all the time in a slow, easy fashion, 
 and he never hurried his horse. If the horse was going 
 too slow for your taste or purpose, and he thought you 
 were about to mention it, he immediately distracted 
 your attention or told you a story. ' D' ye see that 
 point there betune the two trees where a little lane joins 
 on to the road. Well, one day Father M'Hugh and 
 Father . Killeen were stannin' there talkin' an' a little 
 rabbit ran in betune them an' she stood up on her hind 
 legs an' begged for her life. Then the priests looked 
 down an' they seen a weasel afther her, an' they threw 
 a stone at the weasel an' it kilt him. An' she ran off 
 thin into the hedge. How would you account for it, 
 ma'am, the knowledgeableness of the dumb baste that 
 it was to the priests she kem ? ' 
 
 Once, driving the doctor to a case and desiring to 
 distract his attention from the amble of the mare, 
 Johnny waved his whip round the horizon. ' I do be 
 thinkin',' he said, ' that there 's a dale o' land about 
 here.' ' There is,' said the doctor, ' an' a dale o' water 
 as well, and if you don't get that old mare of yours along 
 quicker than you 're doing, I '11 get down and walk.' 
 
 Johnny said to me once : ' A few loads o' gravel on 
 your avenue, ma'am, would do no harm. The bones o' 
 the land do be comin' up through the skin.' 
 
 An old woman said one day of a niggardly person : 
 ' Sure, I 'm not wishin' him to die : still an' all I wouldn't 
 be grudgin' him to his Maker.' 
 
172 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Ireland to the Irish presents a sort of picture-show of 
 gaiety and adventure, but I think a Mayo man would 
 see less of the humour of the Hfe than, for instance, 
 Dr. George Maguire, the son of a Galway man, who had 
 been away from Claremorris for all his school and college 
 years, with some voyages on a liner thrown in, and' a 
 period of hospital work in England. As I write he is 
 serving with tike Army in France. We used to wonder 
 how he ever returned to Mayo, but no one need wonder, 
 listening to his soft, sleepy voice, broken with gurgles of 
 deHght as he unfolds to you the humours of the races, 
 the fair, the auction, anywhere and everywhere he has 
 come and gone. His sense of the oddities and humours 
 makes life a perpetual delight to him, as it did in the case 
 of my brother-in-law, John O'Mahony. One has to be 
 outside the life to appreciate it fully. He stands out- 
 side. Sometimes the stories would not bear repetition, 
 with the chuckle and the gurgle and the soft, sleepy 
 voice left out. Ireland is full of the most wonderful 
 story-teUers. If you ask them to write down what they 
 have told you it becomes very often a duU and lifeless 
 narrative. 
 
 The West is not without its purple patches. I have 
 been told that Johnny Ansbro's sister wet-nursed King 
 Edward, amid such circumstances of splendour as lose 
 nothing in the telling. It is certain that King Edward 
 used to get his shooting-suits of homespun made by 
 Regan of Ballinrobe, who died the other day. Regan 
 had a genius for a good cut, and Xing Edward discovered 
 it when he stayed with Lord Ardilaun at Cong. 
 
 Always one comes upon topsy-turviness in Ireland. I 
 heard an Irish peer not so long ago express his disgust 
 at the conduct of a magistrate who inflicted heavy fines 
 for poteen-making, as though he interfered with an 
 ancient and honourable industry. The peer seemed to 
 look upon the magistrate as a horrid sort of new broom. 
 He mentioned that in his county the poteen-makers 
 always set aside a certain portion of the brew to be dis- 
 covered by the police. Word is given of where the brew 
 
1915 173 
 
 is to be found. The police receive a proportion of the 
 fine inflicted. What becomes of the poteen seized 
 nobody knows — ^perhaps the police do. But the main 
 portion of the brew is intact and every one is pleased. 
 My informant, who is practically a total abstainer him- 
 self, thought this a most fair arrangement. 
 
 There came one day soon after we had gone into the 
 wilderness an R.I.C. man from Belfast, of some six-foot- 
 four, who described for us some of the ways of Belfast. 
 He gave us fearsome accounts of the fighting quality of 
 Belfast. On the occasion of a big row there was a man 
 in charge of the police new to the job. He beUeved in 
 the power of persuasion, especially his own. He was 
 called on to read the Riot Act. ' No, no,' he said, ' that 
 will not be at aU necessary. I will reason with them 
 and you shall see the result.' He rode down the street. 
 Immediately he was seen there was a great shout of 
 
 ' Here comes the old horse-peeler ! ' and the stones 
 
 flew. One caught him on the forehead ; another on the 
 cheek. He turned about : ' Load ! Aim ! Fire ! — ^and 
 be domned to them ! ' That was the only Riot Act 
 read that day in the streets of Belfast. 
 
 This R.I.C. man also gave us a very lively account of 
 chasing the rioters. In the great riots of former days, 
 as is well known, the rioters took refuge in the houses. 
 It was the policy of one Government at least to bring 
 up South-of-Ireland police to Belfast for the Twelfth, 
 and they had a holy joy in their work. That, by the 
 way. One of the foremost in the riots — ^not stone- 
 throwing, but throwing the steel nuts from the ship- 
 building yards, which they stole and secreted for many 
 days before the Twelfth, an absolutely deadly missile in 
 the hands of a Belfast rioter — ^was pursued by our big 
 police ofiicer. Time and again he had his hand on the 
 fellow and he escaped. Finally the rioter got into an 
 empty house and locked the door behind him. By the 
 time the door was broken in our R.I.C. man arrived 
 only in time to see his quarry disappearing over the wall 
 of the next garden. No use to pursue him further. It 
 
174 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 was a rabbit-warren of a place. But there was standing 
 near a big, cracked water-jug. This our big man flung 
 with tremendous force and excellent aim. He heard it 
 crash on the disappearing rioter. ' He remembered me, 
 anyhow,' he said. 
 
 In April of that year we were again in Dublin, to 
 which Lady Aberdeen had returned for the General 
 Meeting of the W.N.H.A. At the Shelbourne we ran 
 up against an old friend. Captain Patrick Butler of the 
 Royal Irish Regiment, Sir WiUiam Butler's eldest son. 
 We had not seen him since early in the century when 
 he had just come back, a slender youth, from the South 
 African War. He told us some stories of Colonel Morris, 
 of the Irish Guards, who was killed on the 1st of 
 September 1914. Before the first battle, Colonel Morris 
 said : ' We are a new regiment and we 've got to make 
 our name and have something to put on our colours. I 
 want all the officers to stand up to-day.' The Irish 
 Guards lost terribly in officers that day. 
 
 Again he sent out three hundred men to take a posi- 
 tion. ' Mind,' he said, ' I don't want to see any of you 
 come back.' Then he went out and died witih. them. 
 Captain Butler said, ' He was a very gallant soldier.' 
 
 Sir David Harrel had just returned that April from 
 settUng some labour trouble in England. I forget what 
 the trade was — shipbuilding, munition-making — ^it was 
 something on which the war depended, and every one 
 had been hurling hard names at the men. Sir David 
 said : ' In one case the men were working all day Friday 
 and Friday night : all day Saturday and Saturday night : 
 on Sunday they had four hours' sleep, and when they were 
 to begin work again they staggered and reeled like 
 drunken men.' 
 
 One beautiful April Sunday morning we were in St.' 
 Stephen's Green with Captain Butler, when there came 
 by a little group of wounded men from St. Vincent's 
 Hospital. A small, groping man in civilian attire walked 
 between two in the familiar blue hospital garb, his eyes 
 bandaged. Captain Butler spoke to them. 
 
1915 175 
 
 ' How are you all doing ? ' 
 
 ' Very well, thank 70U, sir.' 
 
 ' You were wounded — ^where ? ' 
 
 ' At Wipers, sir.' 
 
 ' I, too, was wounded at Wipers. And this poor fellow ? ' 
 
 ' Wipers too, sir. Both eyes shot out.' 
 
 ' Ah, I am very sorry.' 
 
 He took the blinded man's hand. 
 
 ' You did very well at Wipers, splendidly.' 
 
 ' We did our best, sir,' said the blinded man humbly. 
 
 Later that day we saw about five hundred of the Irish 
 Volunteers going for one of their route-marches in the 
 Dublin mountains, where they acquired their deadly 
 skill at marksmanship. Easter Week, 1916, was yet 
 more than a year away. A good many people' in DubUn 
 believed that the Volunteers were only play-acting — in 
 their ignorance. They swung along, splendid, vigorous 
 fellows, full of hfe and the joy of life. One, young, tall, 
 golden-haired, flung laughing, defiant glances from side 
 to side. A couple of very small, very insignificant 
 Tommies stood and stared at them from the side-walk. 
 
 A young officer home wounded told me of a brother- 
 officer who ' had the doom.' He was the bravest of the 
 brave, and he had volunteered at the beginning of the 
 War, leaving a beloved young wife. From the beginning 
 he had said he would never return. As time went on 
 a great horror and disgust of war grew upon him and 
 deepened ; and always there was ' the doom,' When 
 our friend was wounded he came to see him in hospital 
 and envied him his wound. The young officer said : 
 ' He envied even the dead who were out of it.' At 
 parting they shook hands. ' Well, good-bye,' he said. 
 ' You 've been very decent to me ! I shall not see you 
 again.' He was killed within a day or two. 
 
 Quite early in the War letters began to come to me 
 from the mourners. A poem of mine in the Spectator, 
 ' Flower of Youth,' had apparently caught and held 
 many.^ Since it first appeared, in the autumn of 1914, 
 
 ' Flmuers of Youth : Poems in War-Time. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 
 
176 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 it has brought me many hundreds of letters. I believe 
 I have written better poems of the War, or as good, but 
 nothing I have virritten has approached its popularity. 
 My publishers printed a considerable number of copies 
 as a leaflet, and sold them for the benefit of the Red 
 Cross : but froin many parts came, and come, requests 
 from private people to be allowed to print it for dis- 
 tribution. Ojily this last Christmas an employer of 
 labour in a South of England town distributed a thousand 
 copies anonymously among the bereaved mothers of the 
 town on Christmas Day. The poem has had an extra- 
 ordinaty vogue. The Bishop of London has used it more 
 than once in his sermons. I have not heard of it as 
 delivered from a pulpit of my own Faith, but all the 
 other denominations have had it preached to them, and 
 its popularity shows no tendency to diminish. And 
 while I correct my proofs I read in the limes of the 
 30th December 191 8, that the Primate, preaching at 
 Canterbuty Cathedral, quoted ' Flower of Youth ' as 
 ' a 'poem adventurous but rich in brave thought.' 
 
 When the letters began to arrive in numbers it came to 
 me that that was why I was sent to Mayo and given a 
 leisure and quietness I could not have had elsewhere. 
 Besides my own work, of which I have done a great deal, 
 I computed that at one time I was writing a hundred 
 letters a week to the bereaved of the War. People said 
 that I had the healing touch — ^blessed gift at such a 
 time — ^and the discoverers had imparted their discovety 
 to others. It made an immense correspondence, and, as 
 I have never typed, aU was written by my own hand. 
 I wrote long letters, and continued to write to each one 
 until the correspondence lapsed easily and naturally, 
 until they had all I could give them. 
 
 I had letters from aU parts of the world and all manner 
 of people. One came from a woman whoiiad been at 
 my first school with me when we were about eight years 
 old. I won't say how long ago that was. Her father, 
 her husband, and her son had all been in the Connaught 
 Rangers. ' He was born in the regiment,' she wrote of 
 
igiS 177 
 
 the son who had been killed in the War. His body had 
 never been found. ' You know,' she wrote patiently, 
 ' they had not arrived at that time at their present 
 efficiency in finding the wounded and caring for them. 
 He must have crawled away somewhere to die, and no 
 one found him.' 
 
 She recalled vividly my appearance when she had last 
 seen me, as a very fat, rosy little girl with a stutter; 
 The stutter lasted me till well into middle life. How 
 often have I arrived at a hall-door praying to be able to 
 
 ask, ' Is Mrs. at home ? ' especially if the name 
 
 began with a W or R. To ask for a raUway ticket to 
 Richtnond was a terror to me in early London days. 
 It was a difficulty I concealed carefuUy. I can only tell 
 it now when it has disappeared with the nervousness of 
 youth and early womanhood. 
 
 I can recall my old schoolfellow at the age of eight 
 more clearly than I can recall my own children's faces 
 in absence. She was a very fat little girl, with her heavy 
 hair twisted in ringlets Hke thick sausages. I can see 
 the very pattern of the comb that held it back, one of the 
 all-round combs of those days with three gilt balls, like 
 the sign of a pawnbroker's shop, for ornament. They 
 had a tiara-like effect in the golden-brown hair which I 
 much admired. 
 
 The late spring and early summer of that year were 
 gdod, for Mayo. I can stiU see the clean white of the 
 clove pinks and the blue of the forget-me-nots. We had 
 more society than we have ever had since, and the boys 
 were still at home, and there came the priests and a 
 sporting parson, and one or two families of young pepple. 
 About the end of that summer the War began to sweep 
 this one and that one away. Some went to come back 
 no more. 
 
 From time to time during those three j)-ears of Mayo 
 I have ' run down,' and that means a week or fortnight 
 in Dublin. I wiU say this for Mayo, though one abuses 
 its climate every day, that perhaps nowhere else could 
 one have written for six or eight hours a day, pretty 
 
 M 
 
1 78 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 well more than a thousand days with but infrequent 
 ' running down.' 
 
 There was a rather sad visit to Dublin the September 
 of 1 91 5, for Lord and Lady Aberdeen were going to 
 America ; and before that there had been Suvla Bay, 
 when blow after blow fell day after day on one's heart. 
 So many of our friends had gone out in the loth Di\'ision 
 to perish at fiuvla. For the first time came bitterness, 
 for we felt that their hves had been thrown away and 
 that their heroism had gone unrecognised. Suvla — ^the 
 burning beach, and the poisoned wells, and the blazing 
 scrub, does not bear thinMng on. Dublin was full of 
 mourning, and on the faces one met there was a hard 
 brightness of pain as though the people's hearts burnt in 
 the fire and were not consumed. 
 
 We were constantly with Lord and Lady Aberdeen 
 that week, but it was terribly sad. One met the mourners 
 everywhere. One day at Ely House there were two 
 new war-widows at the luncheon-table, and one girl 
 whose brother had been killed. One got to know the 
 look of the new widows — hard, bright eyes, burning for 
 the relief of tears, a high, feverish flush in the cheeks, 
 hands that trembled, and occasionally an uncertain 
 movement of the young head. It was not easy to be 
 happy, even in the lost Paradise which Dubhn had come 
 to be to us since we had been in Mayo. 
 
 Our dear good friends went oflf for six months at the 
 most. They were away for nearly three years. We 
 would have come back to Mayo with even heavier hearts 
 that September if we could have foreseen their long 
 absence, if we could have imagined that the War would 
 still be dragging interminably, as it seemed, when all 
 that long time was gone by. 
 
 The winter closed in about us. Some time before 
 Christmas the cook had no more sense than to go and 
 get scarlet fever. She went to hospital and we were 
 quarantined. That seemed to be the end of society for us 
 in Mayo, limited as it was before. All that winter no 
 one came to our doors. The children, who were ceasing 
 
igiS 179 
 
 to be children, or had ceased except to their mother, used 
 to crowd into my little room for company. The room 
 had been pleasant in summer. With the winter one 
 discovered that to sit with a closed window for five 
 minutes invited asphyxiation. Damp or dry-rot ; prob- 
 ably the latter. 
 
 One day during that lonely autumn, Toby, who had 
 been saying tentatively, ' I wish you 'would let me join 
 up ! ' without any response, for it was a fixed idea with 
 us that he was not strong enough, walked into my Uttle 
 room with a new look in his face. 
 
 ' Mother,' he said, ' will you and father get me a 
 commission ? If you will not I shall enlist.' 
 
 So he had settled it. - I wrote to General Friend, 
 with whom I had had a casual meeting. He was sent 
 for to go before a Board in Dublin. 
 
 While the thing was in suspense he could not rest. 
 It was a duU Christmas, about which I remember little. 
 We were helping an Irish lady in England in a scheme 
 of sending presents to the children of English soldiers 
 from Ireland and vice versa. We pressed all hands into 
 the employment. I don't think Toby would be pressed. 
 He was too preoccupied. Patrick, working for entrance 
 exam, to Sandhurst, gave us a little unwilling help. 
 ' WiU this do for the kid ? ' I heard him say grumpily 
 one day to his sister. The letter began ' Dear Sir,' and 
 ended, ' Yours faithfully.' The wording was of the 
 most formal. It was intended for ' William Cole, aged 
 one.' 
 
 On the very last day of the year I heard in the dark 
 of the morning a quick, sudden cry, ' Mother ! Mother ! ' 
 It is a cry I have often dreamt I heard. I lay drowsily, 
 wondering if I had dreamt of that call in Toby's voice. 
 A little later he was at my door. He had got his 
 commission. 
 
 On the last day of 1914 I had finished up my Httle 
 workaday diary with ' Lord, my heart is ready ! ' I 
 do not know why I wrote it. I never thought then that 
 the War would last long enough for the boys to go. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 ' CHIEFLY LORD GREY 
 
 On Sunday the 31st of October 1915, just as the winter 
 darkness was closing about us, there came in — ^Lord 
 Grey, not any new Lord Grey, but Earl Grey, to light 
 a fire in our clully room. There was a strange loneHness 
 about that winter for us in the house under the hiU, 
 with the premonition of the children's leaving us. Sir 
 David Harrel had said to us, ' The western winter is 
 just a succession of wild Atlantic storms.' It was very 
 dark in that house, and the wild geese flew by overhead 
 in the wild evenings. One's heart was a cold room, 
 when — ^there came in Lord Grey. 
 
 His letter, received that last day of October, was the 
 forerunner of many. He wrote to say how much he 
 liked Flower of Youth : Poems in War Time, the volume of 
 verse published that autumn. He had been sending it 
 to many bereaved mothers. Enclosed in the letter was 
 a sheaf of letters from some of them. Lady Frances 
 Balfour, Lady Desborough, Lady Drummond — others — 
 saying what they felt about the poems. 
 
 Mentioning Lady Desborough recalls an odd coinci- 
 dence. When we had gone up to Dublin in September 
 1915, Pam, who is a great lover of poetry and knows a deal 
 of it by heart, had reheved the tedium of the long, dreary 
 railway journey by repeating poetry. The poem which 
 was most in her mind just then was ' Into Battle,' by 
 Julian GrenfeU, who had died of wounds in the preceding 
 May. I could hardly teU how many times she went over 
 the poem without tiring. I remember the amused 
 interest of a very pleasant EngUshman who listened and, 
 after a time, talked. We were going to stay with some 
 
 180 
 
CHIEFLY LORD GREY i8i 
 
 friends who had taken a furnished house for the winter. 
 When we went into the charming drawing-room which 
 had a real atmosphere, Pam went up to the picture of a 
 soldier on the wall. It was signed ' Julian Grenfell.' 
 
 Later we discovered that many of the volumes in the 
 bookshelves had his name written in them. He had 
 given many books, apparently, to the lady whose tenants 
 our friends were. After two or three discoveries I began 
 guessing, from the subjects of the books, which had 
 been his, or his gift. I was invariably right. I coveted 
 one of those books. It is creditable to my honesty that 
 I did not help myself. 
 
 I answered Lord Grey's first letter on a day when a 
 cattle-drive was in progress on the lands of Carradoyne, 
 where we were then Uving. I wrote him a very long 
 letter about all sorts of things — the day was All Saints' 
 Day — and I had time to be a little alarmed lest I should 
 have been too forward before his answer reached me on 
 December 3rd. He was in winter quarters, and he had 
 had a return of suffering. 
 
 I suppose it was not possible for him to rest. Con- 
 fined to his room as he was and ordered rest, yet he 
 could not keep from lighting fires in cold rooms. He 
 radiated Hfe and energy and warmth. 
 
 He was soon interested in the younger boy and girl — 
 I must learn not to caU them children — ^whose reviews in 
 the Bookman of Christmas books amused and pleased 
 him. They used to select what they should review from 
 my batch — ^Pam taking the schoolgirl books, Patrick — 
 Bunny, as we still called him — anything that had a 
 military subject. That year he had reviewed — like an 
 old hand — a. couple of books on the Army and the Navy, 
 and I had, much to my own amusement, secretly labelled 
 their contributions ' Post-Scriptum by Pamela,' and 
 * Post-Post-Scriptum by Bunny.' Pam said that Mother 
 would do anything : Patrick, being a philosopher, said 
 nothing at all. I told Lord Grey about it, and about 
 Patrick's correspondence with William Cole, aged one ; 
 and soon he began to include them in his benefactions. 
 
i82 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 He loved to give, spiritually and materially. He always 
 called Patrick ' General Bunny.' He would have liked 
 to see ' General Bunny ' doubled up over Private Spud 
 Tamson and The First Hundred Thousand which he sent 
 him that Christmas. To Pam he gave various volumes 
 of poems — to me miscellaneous books — ^the last of them 
 Poems by Colwyn Phillips, Lord St. David's son, who 
 was kiUed in action in May 1915. Colwyn Phillips had 
 been A.D.C. to Lord and Lady Aberdeen ; he was one of 
 that high company of gallant gentlemen who have passed 
 away in this War, belonging to that wonderful type, the 
 man of action who is also a man of letters, of whom the 
 highest example is Sir Phihp Sidney, 
 
 Lord Grey wrote to me once that his greatest pleasure 
 in life was to bring kindred spirits together. He loved to 
 send the praises which he had drawn from other people 
 to their object. There was a professor in Montreal 
 who wrote of me as ' Katharine ' in an intimacy which 
 I Uked, He called Lord Grey ' Dear Excellency,' a 
 manner of address which I liked so much and felt to 
 be so fitting that I longed to adopt it myself. When 
 Lord Grey died that professor's fire must have died out, 
 like many another's, leaving a cold hearth. 
 
 Once he knew of our loneliness and isolation he sent 
 us sheaves of things that came to him, which he felt 
 woidd interest us. There were many things of engross- 
 ing interest. There was Charles Lister's great letter to 
 Lady Desborough on the death of JuUan Grenfell, which 
 might take its place in any anthology of EngUsh prose. 
 There was the story of the Toy Drum, of which Henry 
 Newbolt made a poem, told by one who was there. 
 There was the story of how the submarine E 7 ran up the 
 Bosphorus and shelled Constantinople, told with such 
 dash and fire by a young officer of the E 7 that it ran 
 quite easily into a ballad, which Lord Grey sent the 
 mother of the young officer who, in return, sent me his 
 photograph. The letter got into print as did some 
 others of the things he sent to us, but many were private. 
 How we looked for his letters through that winter ! 
 
CHIEFLY LORD GREY 183 
 
 He was greatly interested in Pam's poetry. One of 
 her poems, ' The Blind Soldier,' he sent secretly to the 
 editor of a big review — ^I forget its exact title — ^which 
 represented the Colonies and the Empire. The poem 
 was accepted, but it had already been accepted and put 
 in print by The Queen. He was so nice about being 
 ready to ' knock again ' for her at that door, though it 
 must have been a little da!shing to his kindness when he 
 found the acceptance was in vain. He wrote to her that 
 he was quite sure Julian Grenfell would have loved her 
 poetry, which was a great delight to 'the young poet. 
 
 Soon after Toby had gone Patrick followed, to get 
 some coaching for Sandhurst, so there was no longer the 
 dear figure in the corner of the sofa of evenings, gurgling 
 and choking over Sfud Tamson, now and again trying to 
 impart to others %he delights of that classic, attempts 
 which ended in tears of laughter. So there were only 
 three of us, and poor Pam depending for society on a 
 writing mother, who more and more found her way out 
 of Mayo through work and letters. In self-defence Pam 
 was obliged to take to writing too, stories in addition to 
 the poems she had been writing already. 
 
 It was then that Lord Grey's letters and enclosures 
 and books came in. They were a constant interest and 
 delight, as he would have wished them to be. Here is 
 a bit about his friends, Pat and Pam, which, I think, he 
 would not mind my quoting. This was written later in 
 the year : 
 
 Delighted to hear that General Bunny is as merry as a grig at 
 Sandhurst and is thus, by gaiety of heart, keeping up the traditions 
 of the Irish soldier. As for your Pam, that she should be able to 
 dress herself out of the income earned by her pen, that is splendid. 
 Tell her from me that if I were not planning to go to Petrograd 
 to see my daughter, who has been wounded in the face by a 
 splinter from a hand grenade, I would go to Ireland for the 
 express purpose of seeing the best-dressed young lady in Ireland. 
 
 He was by this time out of winter quarters, and had 
 been fishing with ' Dr. Jim ' an old friend of his 
 Rhodesian days. 
 
1 84 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 He had written to me that I was to promise not to 
 publish his letters, saying he would not write any more 
 unless I did, and I had given him the promise, but this, 
 I think, he would not mind my quoting, since it is im- 
 personal : 
 
 Your love for Prince Charming and the King of Golden 
 Courtesies makes me tell you a little compliment that was paid 
 to his mother by^Mrs. Watts (of Limmerlease, near Guildford), 
 a Highland Gael, whom, if you do not know already, you must 
 take another house near Guildford to know, so that you may be 
 able to write another ' Lady of the Manor ' chapter. I asked 
 her once if I might bring with me, when I was paying a call from 
 London, Mrs. Wyndham, the matrix of all you love in Prince 
 Charming. She said : ' You vdU be doubly welcome if you bring 
 her on whom the Sun shines always and the Moon at night. 
 Being cursedly ignorant and unread, I knew not the allusion and 
 asked to be enlightened. ' Surely,' said she, ' you are acquainted 
 with Lindsay's Book of the Saints, in which the story is told of a 
 certain lady whose dwelling in the forest was always enveloped 
 in a halo of shine. People came from all parts to know why she 
 was the recipient of such divine favours. Did she wear a hair 
 shirt or peas in her shoes or practise any such austerities ? No ; 
 she simply radiated joyousness on all around her, like Mrs. 
 Wyndham. 
 
 His last gift to Pamela was a reproduction of the 
 Sargeant portrait of him. It hangs one side of our hearth. 
 On the odier side is the portrait of Mr. Wyndham. 
 
 May he be receiving joy in Heaven for all he gave on 
 earth ! 
 
 He was a true friend of Ireland, and loved the Irish. 
 He had been reading my Reminiscences, and wrote that 
 as soon as he was free he was coming to Ireland to look 
 for K.T.'s and John O'Mahonys as well as to see the 
 best-dressed young lady. For many years he had been 
 as a voice in the wUdemess crying that Federal Home 
 Rule was the solution of Irish troubles. No one heeded 
 him, any more than people heeded the crank or cranks 
 who brought up, year after year, the Daylight Saving 
 BiU in Parliament only to be contemptuously rejected. 
 
CHIEFLY LORD GREY 185 
 
 But Daylight Saving is an accomplished fact, and a 
 beneficent one ; and the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, 
 and Votes for Women, and all sorts of discredited things 
 have come to be accepted in these days. (By the way, 
 let me tell how one of my children asked ' Why do they 
 talk of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill ? BUI isn't a 
 lady's name.') 
 
 Lord Grey lived to see the Irish Convention begin 
 and to send it his blessing from what was practi- 
 cally his death-bed. May that blessing even yet bear 
 fruit ! 
 
 He had a particular affection and admiration for A. E., 
 with whom he had had many discussions of the Irish 
 Question, when during a Dublin visit he put up at 
 Plunkett House. He read all the newest Irish books, 
 and discussed them in his letters. I wish I might have 
 drawn on them. His views were always so interesting, 
 although I think he sometimes overestimated a book 
 because it was Irish. He was very un-English in being 
 undogmatic. In fuU flow of correspondence I do not 
 think he alluded once to Easter Week, although he 
 was strongly Imperialist. He had an immense joie de 
 vivre, as he had an immense interest in aU that con- 
 cerned his kind. He was extraordinarily altruistic, 
 sympathetic, and tolerant, and over all played the 
 lambent gift of humour. 
 
 He said to Susan Mitchell, whom he could not per- 
 suade to be an Imperialist : ' I shall present you with a 
 map of the British Empire.' She said, ' I shall hang it 
 where I cannot see it.' He replied, ' Then I shall have 
 the satisfaction of knowing that you have the Empire 
 at your back.' 
 
 I think he had French blood. He must have had ; 
 he was so quick and vivacious, so cosmopolitan, so very 
 far removed from all we are accustomed to call insular. 
 The warmth of his generous spirit overflowed upon all 
 whom he touched. An essentially splendid and lovable 
 personality. I am very happy to think that upon me 
 and mine, while yet he stayed, fell some measure of his 
 
1 86 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 light and his regard. How many fires must have gone 
 out with his light of Hfe ! 
 
 That winter at Carradoyne which he helped us 
 through was by far the loneUest, although for some 
 portion of it we stiU had our children. Oddly enough 
 it has been less lonely without them ; perhaps it is 
 not so odd, seeing that three-fourths of one's heart and 
 soul, or more jhan that, are out of it and sending back 
 messages from the great world. Perhaps Carradoyne 
 was a house which had the feeling of loneliness and 
 darkness in the winter. To be within hearing of the 
 noise of the railway has made quite a surprising difference, 
 even though the wild geese shun the urbanities of 
 Brookhill, and take their lonely way high up in the sky 
 across the chimneys of Carradoyne. Since we have been 
 inhabitants of BrookhiU we have made the amazing 
 discovery that Claremorris, for all its ramshackle look, 
 just misses being a backwater. Castlebar, the county 
 town, Westport, other more important towns than 
 Claremorris, are oppressive with the feeling of the back- 
 water. It must be because Claremorris is a junction, 
 that the tides of life flow through it. North, South, 
 East, and West, that it escapes the deadly feeling of 
 being a backwater of Ufe. 
 
 My post-bag grew fuller. When I talk of Lord Grey 
 and the alleviations he brought I must not forget many 
 other faithful friends who sent us news of the world — 
 chief among them Frank Mathew, who wrote his first 
 war bulletin to me about the time the correspondence 
 with Lord Grey began, and has sent his reports faithfully 
 ever since, sometimes twice, in times of rapid movement 
 even thrice, a week. How priceless those letters will 
 be when this War is as old as the Peninsular War ! 
 
 At least we started with utter enthusiasm for the 
 War and its purposes. One did not know all that would 
 happen, how it would drag and drag, till weariness of it 
 and longing for it to end overcame all other feeUngs. 
 And, after a few weeks, there was the first leave and the 
 new young officer came back to display himself in his 
 
CHIEFLY LORD GREY 187 
 
 khaki. I had not been able to be in Dublin to see him 
 make his first appearance, as he wished. A. E. had 
 written to me : ' Toby has been in here, suffering from 
 the intolerable indignity of having to wear civihan 
 clothes till six o'clock this evening.' 
 
 We were immensely proud of and pleased with him 
 and he with himself. When he took his next leave he 
 got into mufti at the first possible moment. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 • THE REBELLION 
 
 In the beginning of March we went to Dublin for a 
 fortnight's breath of life after the winter stagnation. It 
 was a perfectly good time, a little clouded at the opening 
 by our young soldier being sent off to Ballykinlar in the 
 north of Ireland : we had hoped he would be in Dublin 
 at Richmond Barracks. Some weeks later I was thanking 
 the Mercy which had sent him to BaUykinlar, and kept 
 him there during the Dublin Rising. 
 
 The streets that March were fuU of serious-looking 
 young men in twos and threes with absorbed faces, 
 walking or talking in groups, whom we put down as Sinn 
 Feiners. One day a Sinn Fein officer in full uniform 
 clanked down Grafton Street to the amazed interest of 
 the other officers in khaki. People were puzzled about 
 Sinn Fein. It was certainly becoming very daring in 
 its appearances and doings. The prevailing opinion was 
 that diere was nothing to be afraid about. The good 
 citizens of DubHn for the greater part looked on it as 
 play-acting. Some talked of shirkers, and even of 
 cowards — in their ignorance. Already these young men 
 must have been under stern discipline. The passing 
 crowd sometimes showed what it thought of them. 
 Young ladies stepped aside ostentatiously as they went 
 by. One would have said that the quick Irish blood 
 would have been up, but they did not seem to notice. 
 They were too absorbed in something. Perhaps knowing 
 what they knew the insidt passed them by. 
 
 Never was such a deceiving, disarming thing as the 
 openness of Sinn Fein that spring. It manoeuvred in 
 the streets, practised street fighting, and brought off a 
 
THE REBELLION 189 
 
 sham attack on Dublin Castle while the Dublin Metro- 
 politan Police looked on and scratched their heads in 
 bewilderment. How could anv one believe in the 
 seriousness of a conspiracy that so flaunted itself ? 
 
 An old CoUege friend of my husband, an official in a 
 Government Office in London, visited Dublin about 
 that time. He wrote on February 23, igid^we just 
 missed him in Dublin : — 
 
 There is a remarkable difference of opinion among the people 
 I have met as to the importance of the Sinn Fein movement. 
 Some people think it is merely theatrical heroism without risk. 
 Others think it may mean serious business, even to the extent of 
 bomb outrages. I saw a detachment of their Volunteers march- 
 ing up Grafton Street on Sunday, which inclined me to the former 
 view. First an advanced guard of cyclists and foot-men beauti- 
 fully uniformed and armed to the teeth, carefully scouting down 
 King Street and along the Green, in case of an ambuscade, leading 
 you to expect that a regiment of a thpusand or so was following. 
 Then the main body headed by eight pipers in saffron kilts, but 
 consisting of twenty men only, in all sorts of costumes, a few 
 carrying arms, but most of them poor specimens, all taking them- 
 selves very seriously. 
 
 One of those , evenings in March we went to the 
 Abbey Theatre where the plays were Yeats' Kathleen- 
 ni-Houlihan and the Mixed Marriage of Mr. St. John 
 Ervine. We had with us a young Hussar officer and 
 our boy up from Ballykinlar. In the next seats to ours 
 were an officer and his wife who were staying at the 
 Shelbourne, as we were. There was a fair amount of 
 khaki through the house ; and although people took it 
 for granted that there would be a strong element of 
 Sinn Fein amongst the Abbey audience, I don't think 
 any one had cause to feel uncomfortable because of the 
 coat he wore. 
 
 But the politics of the mass of the audience were 
 pretty evident. The curtain went up for Kathleen-ni- 
 Houlihan. There came the Little Old Woman creeping 
 up to the cottage door, calling the bridegroom from the 
 bride, the one that heard from the warm hearth-fires 
 
I90 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 and all that men love and desire, from softness and 
 pleasure and success and ease to the hard path her 
 lovers must tread. You could have heard a pin drop 
 in the house. Then came : 
 
 They shall be remembered for ever ; 
 
 They shall be living for ever ; 
 
 They shall be speaking for ever ; 
 
 The people wdlThear them for ever ; 
 
 They have no need for prayers : they have no need for prayers. 
 
 The gallery and the back of the house broke into tumultu- 
 ous cheers and clapping of haiids, and the soldiers in 
 khaki looked on wondering. 
 
 A month went by, six weeks ; and one morning there 
 were no letters — a disquieting and annoying circum- 
 stance in a household which Uved on its letters. The 
 postman had left a mysterious message to the effect 
 that there were no letters ; there might be none for a 
 week ; there was ' a row up in Dublin.' 
 
 ' A cock-and-bull story ! ' I said sharply, out of my 
 disappointment at getting no letters : ' the line is under 
 water ' ; for, of course, there had been the usual deluge 
 before the magnificent weather which hung the gold and 
 blue as a background for the tragedy of Easter Week. 
 
 But that day as the dull hours passed the sense of 
 calamity travelled by the earth and the air and the wind 
 and the water. Out on the bog-road, where the slender 
 trees looked down at their images in the water, we talked 
 to the man at the level crossing. He, too, was an exile. 
 He came from Nobber in Meath. No trains had passed 
 through since Saturday : Sunday was a dies non. Per- 
 haps it was a strike on the railway. 
 
 The silence of the country, without the occasional 
 railway whistle, ached. You felt as though the earth 
 listened, the Little Old Woman, perhaps, listening with 
 her heart. 
 
 The next day and the next, the rumours came thick 
 and fast. And with them Fear : Fear, not of Sinn 
 Feiners, but of a possible German invasion. One 
 
THE REBELLION 191 
 
 imagined the spiked helmets coming in a hne above the 
 tops of the hedgerows. There would be the mountains 
 for refuge, but not so near as at Shankill : the nearest 
 mountains were seventeen miles away, and every one 
 would be making for them, and there would be the 
 question of food. The bogs — ^if one knew them well 
 enough, there was safety in the bogs and destruction for 
 the enemy; not knowing them, there might be a quag- 
 mire and a slow, living grave for the one who sought to 
 escape that way. 
 
 The boy who was going to Sandhurst, and was due 
 there within the week, went up and down to Clare- 
 morris incessantly looking for news of trains. Every ojie 
 was on tenterhooks and restless. I, as I have done at 
 even a sadder time in my life, sat down and wrote. 
 Oddly enough, I was writing of the other Rebellion. I 
 had begun Lord Edward, a Study in Romance, some five 
 days before the outbreak of the Rebelhon of 1 916. 
 
 I went on with it. I am sure the sight of me sitting 
 t^iere, writing as usual, steadied the nerves of the house- 
 hold. I was surrounded by Rebellion books — ^the other 
 Rebellion, when every rebel carried writing materials in 
 his knapsack instead of the baton of a Field-Marshal. 
 I had Holt's Narrative, Tone's Journal, Heelings Narrative, 
 Cloney's Rebellion in the County of Wexford, with all the 
 Fitzgerald books. Now and again the boy or girl sat 
 and read this strange apposite literature. And always, 
 while I wrote, the wonder was upon me, the incredible 
 thing that I should have lived to see another Irish 
 Rebellion. 
 
 I think the first rumour of a Sinn Fein Rebellion 
 reached us on the Tuesday afternoon, but the days 
 passed, and the Sinn Feiners had not at all emerged from 
 the fog and the terror of the silent hours. I did not 
 associate this wild melodranaa with gentle, smiling 
 Thomas MacDonagh, hat in hand and bowing politely, 
 as I remembered him. Nor with Pearce, of whom I 
 had heard but vaguely as a schoolmaster of ideals ; it 
 would have seemed a mad thing to think of that shadowy 
 
192 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 youth, Joseph Plunkett, whom I remembered as a baby, 
 a commandant of the Irish Republican Army. Yet the 
 week was not over before some one said to me : ' This 
 will be a terrible thing for the Plunketts.' 
 
 I had wrung my hands before that over what I foresaw. 
 I remembered mornings long ago in the Land League 
 days, and the days of the Invincibles, when one prayed 
 not to wake tUl late because there was a hanging at 
 Kilmainham JaU, which was only a good stretch of 
 country road and a few fields away from the home of 
 my girlhood, so that with the wind in that quarter one 
 might have heard the toUing of the dead bell. 
 
 ' There wiU be aU that over again,' I said, little know- 
 ing that the sons of old friends and_ people I had met in 
 ordinary social Ufe were of those who were going to die. 
 
 Mayo is given to minding her own business. Having 
 given birth to the Land League and accomplished that 
 Revolution, Mayo has ever since been quite well content 
 to rest on her laurels. A ' strong ' farmer came away 
 from his tillage one of those days to ask us for news. 
 ' And now we shall get no more money for Land Pur- 
 chase,' he said sorrowfully. ' Was ever anything so 
 uncalled for ? ' 
 
 The little war up in Dublin left Mayo as unmoved as 
 the Great War — ^in our part of it. I stopped an old 
 man coming from the fair one of the early days^ to ask 
 if he had heard any news. One asked news of everybody, 
 in those strange days when we seemed to be enclosed, 
 shut away from the world, as though by a wall. He 
 answered that he had never known a worse fair for pigs : 
 there were no buyers. I asked him if any news had come 
 in from Dublin. He said irascibly that if I 'd talk aisy 
 and stop bawlin' he might know what I was talkin' about. 
 I tried not to bawl and he arrived at some understanding 
 of my question, ' Oh, aye,' he said, ' bad work, bad work,' 
 and he went on his way. 
 
 The woman at another level-crossing, when the Re- 
 bellion was sinking down into its ashes, remarked that 
 it was a terrible thing : it had stopped the fairs all over 
 
THE REBELLION 193 
 
 the country, the people couldn't get their pigs to 
 Limerick; and another woman asked: 'Isn't it a 
 desperate situation them villains have made for us.? 
 the man that comes collectin' eggs is stopped, an' I 've 
 five score on me hands.' 
 
 On Monday-, the ist of May, we motored to Tuam^i 
 We were not sure that we should not be held up on the 
 way. But all went smoothly, and it was an enchanting 
 day. In Tuam we found a different point of view con- 
 cerning the Rebellion, although they did not talk freely, 
 because of my husband's official position : but their 
 silence was eloquent. They did not consider it as a 
 matter of fairs and markets. They are quite a different 
 people once you cross the imaginary boundary -line 
 between Mayo and Galway. 
 
 , At Tuam we succeeded in getting the Daily Sketch and 
 another English illustrated paper. But already news had 
 begun to come through. The local paper had a long tale 
 of the events in Dublin, fairly accurate, as it proved. 
 
 One of these days the boy and girl met on, the road a 
 motor car containing three nuns, which was being 
 driven very fast by a man obviously a gentleman, who 
 slowed down to ask them the way, and being told, went 
 on at great speed. At first our imaginings went no 
 further than that they were refugee nuns, from perhaps 
 Athenry, where things were rather desperate. Later on 
 hearing tales of Liam Mellowes and his hair-breadth 
 escapes we began to wonder. Mellowes will occupy a 
 sort of Robin Hood place in the Irish popular mind by 
 and by, if he does not occupy it already. 
 
 One day during the Terror a frightened old lady 
 arrived at one of the small western hotels. She was so 
 terrified of Sinn Fein that she shook as in a palsy when 
 she was spoken to. The people were very sorry for her, 
 and did their best to comfort her. She kept to her 
 room for the whole of her stay. In the end she went 
 hurriedly, having apparently recovered her self-control ; 
 but it was the wild disorder in which her room was 
 left that set her hosts furiously to think. 
 
194 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 An Engli^ colonel at the Shelboume told Barry 
 O'Brien, who told it to us, this tale. His daughter was 
 motoring in the West of Ireland, driving her own car, 
 when the Rebellion broke out. She drove right into 
 the midst of Mellowes' men and was captured and her 
 car commandeered. She was with them a day and a 
 night, during which she was treated with the most 
 perfect, courtesy and consideration. At the end of that 
 time Mellowes himself arrived. He made profuse 
 apologies for the inconvenience the action of his men 
 had caused her. He asked if she had any complaint as 
 to her treatment and she answered, none. He said, 
 ' You are perfectly free to go now. If there was any 
 chance of your listening to me I should make a request, 
 which, of course, I have no power of enforcing.' ' What 
 is it ? ' ' That for twenty-four hours after your leaving 
 us you give no information that may lead to our arrest.' 
 ' I promise that,-* she said. 
 
 Barry O'Brien asked : 'Was she very much frightened ? ' 
 
 ' You may beUeve that I was,' the father repUed. 
 ' But she, not at all. She said they behaved perfectly.' 
 
 The first letter to reach me, censored, was from Lady 
 Wemyss, Lord Edward's great-granddaughter. It bore 
 date Easter Sunday. On that calamitous day, her son, 
 Lord Elcho, fell at Katia in the desert of Sinai. I had 
 written to her and to Colonel Wyndham on the Easter 
 Monday before we knew that anything had happened. 
 He wrote in the following week that my letter, censored, 
 of course, had been the first letter to reach him from 
 Ireland. 
 
 The boy who was due at Sandhurst at the end of April 
 got away a week late. As his boat went off from the 
 North Wall where he had arrived after many adventures, 
 a solitary shot rang out from where an isolated rebel 
 was still sniping. 
 
 A priest who went up to Dublin on the Easter Monday, 
 and was shut up there during the Rebelhon week, was 
 in great request when he got back again to Claremorris. 
 He must have been tired of teUing his story over and 
 
THE REBELLION 195 
 
 over, but he was very good natured about it. After he 
 had told it to us, which he did the day following his 
 return, I wrote it out as nearly as I could remember. 
 He had not begun to get weary of it by constant repetition 
 and, since we hung on his words, he had so much en- 
 couragement to tell the strange . tale with spirit and 
 vivacity. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 A priest's story 
 
 On Easter Monday Father Michael and myself went up 
 
 to Dublin to see poor Father C who is lying very ill 
 
 in the hospital in Leeson Street. We went by the 9.15 
 train which reaches the Broadstone at 2.30. As we 
 intended to return the next night we had only hand- 
 bags with us. 
 
 Nothing at all happened till we reached the Broadstone, 
 but I heard a porter cursing the Sinn Feiners. As soon 
 as we got out of the train some people came up to us and 
 said, ' I wouldn't advise you. Father, to go down into 
 the city at all. There 's some terrible bad work going 
 on there. Ye 'd better wait for the next train back to 
 the West.' 
 
 Well, we didn't know what they meant at all, but, of 
 
 course, we were up to see poor C and we weren't 
 
 going back without seeing him. There wasn't a cab or 
 a car to be seen — ^that was the first queer sign — so we 
 just set out to walk, thinking we would pick up a tram 
 on the way. We hadn't gone far before we met a very 
 respectable-looking young man, and he said to us much 
 what the people at the station had said, bidding us to go 
 back for there was bad work in the streets. ' What is 
 it ? ' we asked, ' a riot ? ' ' Something of the kind,' 
 said he. ' They were firing off a lot of rifles at the Post 
 Office a while ago, but they 've stopped now.' 
 
 We thanked him, but we said we 'd got to see a sick 
 friend, and we went on, wondering at the emptiness of 
 the streets. There wasn't a tram running or any other 
 vehicle. But when we got into Sackville Street we saw 
 a great crowd on before us all round the Post Office, 
 
 196 
 
A PRIEST'S STORY 197 
 
 and extending as far as the Hammam Hoter where I 
 always put up. There was nothing else in the street, 
 but a few soldiers here and there, and in the middle of 
 the street three or four dead horses lying. Now and 
 again there came a foot passenger hurrying along, and 
 every one of them said the same thing : ' For the Love 
 of God turn back. There 's terrible work going on in 
 Dublin to-day.' 
 
 We went on towards the Hammam, but I wasn't long 
 in finding out that the crowd in front of me was a very 
 bad one; the slums of Dublin were out, and on for 
 mischief. So we thought it the best thing to turn back 
 and take rooms at the Gresham. We had a meal there, 
 and then we set off to visit our poor friend. No one at 
 this time seemed to know what was up. Every one was 
 asking the other, and no one at all guessed at the real 
 seriousness of the matter, thinking it was only a street 
 row, and that the worst of it was over. 
 
 We avoided the Post Office, going round by the side 
 streets, which were very quiet, and once we left Sackville 
 Street behind us the town was as quiet as possible till 
 we got to Stephen's Green, where there was a barricade 
 of tramcars and motor cars and such things from Grafton 
 Street corner across to the gate of the Green with the 
 arch over it ; and there we saw the Sinn Feiners in 
 uniform standing by the barricade and guarding the 
 path where it was left open. They didn't hinder us 
 passing and were very civil and respectful. So we 
 went on and spent a couple of hours talking and laughing 
 with poor C , and cheering the poor fellow up. 
 
 It was about 5.30 when we left him. As we walked 
 back we could see the Sinn Feiners in the Green digging 
 themselves in ; but we didn't even know yet what was 
 happening till we turned into Grafton Street and saw 
 the looting going on. It wasn't as bad there as it was 
 in Sackville Street ; but the way of it was you 'd see a 
 group of men and women coming along, and suddenly a 
 man would take out a stone and smash a window, and 
 then they 'd all begin to smash and drag out handfuls of 
 
198 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 whatever it might be, jewellery or boots or toys or any- 
 thing else. There was something horrible about it. 
 There wasn't a creature to interfere with them, and 
 they looked an uncommonly nasty lot, so we walked 
 along in the middle of the street and no one minded us. 
 Once a couple of men in the Sinn Fein uniform came 
 along and they looked at the crowd with disgust in 
 their faces, and i saw one of them snatch a handful of 
 jewellery from a fellow and fling it in the roadway. 
 It was as if, being out for a big thing, they asked 
 themselves if it was for such people they were doing it. 
 
 We got back the quiet way again, and I said to Father 
 Michael as we walked along, that as we 'd seen poor 
 
 C we 'd better get home that night instead of 
 
 waiting for the next day, but when we got back to the 
 hotel we found the doors closed. They opened to let 
 us in, but as soon as we 'd got in we were told that the 
 place was closed for the night, and there was no getting 
 out again. 
 
 The night was quiet enough except for a rifle shot now 
 and again, and the morning was so quiet that I was able 
 to sHp up to Eccles Street and say my Mass. That was 
 the last time I was out tiU the following Monday. 
 
 Through the day troops kept arriving, but it was 
 pretty quiet at our end of the street, though the looting 
 had been going on all night, the police having withdrawn 
 from the streets and no one to hinder the looters. But, 
 of course, as we were not allowed to leave the hotel, we 
 could see nothing of that. Some time that evening a 
 knocking came at the door and there entered a sergeant 
 and four soldiers. We all had to appear before him. 
 ' I am very sorry,' he said, ' to be so unfriendly, but, 
 till I know all about you, you are under suspicion.' 
 There were about a hundred guests in the hotel, many of 
 them EngUsh people over for the hoHday. As soon as 
 he had satisfied himself he gave the word to his men, 
 and they dropped down in the haU, just as they were, 
 and slept like logs. 
 
 They were the only people in the place that did sleep. 
 
A PRIEST'S STORY m 
 
 The noise that broke out in the night was beyond all 
 description : and it became worse the next morning 
 when the gun-boat was bombarding Liberty Hall. That 
 night the looting went on fast and furious. 
 
 I had a front room and I made good use of the window, 
 although no one was supposed to look out, and the 
 blinds were drawn. Tuesday night we were all for- 
 bidden to sleep at the front, so I took my mattress and 
 laid it on the floor in Father Michael's room and got 
 what sleep I could there. Our guard had got up on the 
 roof and were hiding among the chimney-pots sniping 
 now and again. There was one young lad, a terribly 
 
 wild lad, maybe you know him, he is the son of 
 
 K.C. (We did know him. He was at an English public 
 school with our boys. — K. T. H.) and he enlisted when 
 the war broke out. The sergeant was heart-scalded 
 with him. He couldn't be kept out of danger, only 
 exposing himself everywhere, and the sergeant said if he 
 took his eye off him maybe it is out in the street he 'd 
 be — and as time went on to be in the street was certain 
 death, for the guns were firing from the Rotunda, and 
 they were firing from O'Connell Bridge, and it was just 
 a rain of death all the time. 
 
 I '11 tell you some of the sights I saw from my window, 
 for ajl that I was forbidden to look out. I saw three 
 men suddenly come out from Britain Street and stand 
 on the edge of the pathway near the Parnell ..statue. 
 They looked as if they were strangers and confused, 
 and asking each other questions. There came a volley 
 and the whole three were on their faces stone dead. I 
 saw poor old John O'Dufly killed. He came hurrying 
 along the pathway, wearing his top-hat, like a man in a 
 dream. There wasn't a thing in the street but himself 
 and the dead horses and the fire from the guns. ' My 
 God !'' shouted I, ' is the man mad ? ' I 'd hardly said 
 it when he went down. I heard he was looking for his 
 favourite grandson and couldn't be kept in. Another 
 thing I saw, and stuck at the window to see it, was the 
 shelling of the houses opposite — the Y.M.C.A. and the 
 
200 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Richmond Institute for the Work of the Blind — ^where 
 a most persistent sniper was on the roof picking off 
 every soldier that came in sight. From the Rotunda 
 end of the street there came an armoured motor-car ; it 
 made observations and went away. Then came a 
 machine-gun, and I saw the men digging up a place for 
 it in the roadway. Soon after that die shelling of the 
 city began, but Jaefore that I left the window. After- 
 wards I saw the ruin the shells had made ; but we were 
 getting used, by this time, to the terrible noises that 
 shook the place till every minute you 'd expect it down 
 about your ears. 
 
 Thursday night was the worst of aU, for it seemed that 
 the whole city was on fire. Outside the windows every- 
 thing was red, with great columns of black smoke 
 ascending to the sky. The houses at the corner of Earl 
 Street were burning, and there was a strong south wind 
 blowing aU that day. ^Tien there was a sudden gust of 
 wind the flames licked by your window and went off 
 again. We gave ourselves up for lost. I never saw a 
 stranger sight than I saw that night. All day the 
 Catholic ladies had been coming to me and Father 
 Michael asking to go to Confession, and we explaining 
 to them that, not belonging to the Dublin Diocese, we 
 had no faculty to hear Confessions, though we could give 
 Absolution if the necessity arose. The manager had got 
 through a message to the Fire Brigade, but they had 
 answered that their men had been shot at that day driv- 
 ing the engines and they would not expose them again. 
 All the women were on their knees in the billiard-room 
 saying the Rosary, and the queerest thing of all was to 
 see the English and Scotch ladies, who were Protestants 
 and Presbyterians, down on their knees with the Catho- 
 lics joining in as far as they knew how. There was 
 certain death in the street, but we were in the mind to 
 do something desperate, when, by the Mercy of God, 
 the wind changed at about eleven o'clock. 
 
 We were on very short commons by the end of the 
 week — a slice of tinned meat, dry bread, and tea without 
 
A PRIEST'S STORY 201 
 
 milk was served out during the day. The air of the 
 place was very bad, for you must know, with all these 
 people shut up, not a door nor a window had been 
 opened during the week, and, tight as everything was, 
 the stench of the dead horses seemed to creep through — 
 they were a horrible sight by this time, for the sun had 
 been blazing hot for several days. 
 
 On Saturday I saw the surrender of the rebels at the 
 Post Office. Oh no, before that I must tell you, I had 
 seen eight men pass from the burning buildings about 
 Earl Street across the street to the Post Office. You 
 know the width of Sackville Street. And it was swept 
 by gun-fire from end to end. Suddenly I saw them 
 scurry out and run like rabbits. The guns blazed. One 
 fell, but picked himself up again and followed the others. 
 They all got safely as far as I could see. 
 
 The surrender — ^well, somehow I thought it a ter- 
 ribly sad thing. The Sinn Feiners were lined up by the 
 Post Office. There was a firing party at each end, and 
 soldiers scattered about among the rebels. They came 
 forward, took off their bandoliers, and laid them down in 
 a heap, laid down their arms, and went back agairi. 
 There were old men there and there were boys in knicker- 
 bockers. Some of them couldn't have been fourteen. I 
 knew what their madness would have cost us, had cost 
 us, but I could have cried like a child. 
 
 The next morning I got up early and went down- 
 stairs. In the hall I met the sergeant. He was a fine, 
 pleasant fellow, and we all liked him. Everything seemed 
 very quiet after the noises of the last few days. ' Are 
 you going out, sir ? ' he asked. ' I am going to the 
 Cathedral to say my Mass,' I replied. ' If you '11 wait 
 I shall give you a guard of my men.' ' Oh no, thank 
 you,' I said, ' I don't want a guard.' For the queer 
 thing was, you seemed to have grown so used to death 
 that you didn't care a bit about your own skin. 
 
 The streets were very quiet as I passed through them, 
 only here and there you had to step aside to avoid a 
 dead man. The ruin and destruction of the place was 
 
202 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 borne in on me suddenly. I had an inclination, like an 
 animal, to howl and scream. It was as if my mind was 
 going from me with the terror of the sight I saw. 
 
 However, I conquered myself and went on. Entering 
 the Cathedral by the sacristy, the first thing I saw was 
 a little girl fast asleep on the vesting-table. I didn't 
 disturb her. When I went out to say my Mass I saw 
 men and women all fast asleep lying about the altar. 
 They were everywhere, under the seats, and in the 
 gangways, all dead asleep. There was hardly any con- 
 gregation. Indeed I don't know if there was any. I 
 said my Mass before a congregation all dead asleep. 
 They were starving and exhausted, the creatures ! There 
 were a couple asleep under the altar while I said my Mass. 
 
 Another thing. We travelled back with an EngHsh 
 officer : there were one or two others, very pleasant and 
 kindly. This one told how he had captured a Sinn 
 Feiner, and was so much interested in his prisoner and 
 the splendid fight he had put up, that he asked him if 
 he would join the Army, that if he would, he would try 
 to see him through. ' I fear I may have been going out- 
 side my province,' he said apologetically. ' I don't know 
 that I could have done it, but I should have tried. " I 
 can't see that it would be right to join the Army," the 
 Sinn Feiner answered, " but we 'U argue it out. If you 
 can beat me in the argument I '11 join." There wasn't 
 much time to argue it, but I said one or two things and 
 he pondered them, and then he said, "No, I can't do 
 it." So I had to send him off to the barracks. I could 
 have hugged that man.' 
 
 On the other hand a man came to the Broadstone 
 when we were there. He looked very sullen and down- 
 cast as he asked for the officer in charge. ' What do you 
 want ? ' the officer asked sternly. ' To give informa- 
 tion.' ' You 're a Sinn Feiner ? ' ' Yes.' ' I 'm an 
 Englishman and I hate a traitor. Go over there with 
 your information.' He was a white blackbird. They 
 were all saying that there were no informers among the 
 Sinn Feiners. 
 
A PRIEST'S STORY 203 
 
 1 forgot to tell you that at the corner ofXiCeson Street 
 and the Green we met an old man and a little boy. 
 ' You 're a priest. Father ? ' he said. ' I am,' said I. 
 ' I want to get into the Castle,' said he, ' if you go with 
 me they '11 let me in.' ' What do you want to do at the 
 Castle ? I am only a country priest. They would not 
 let me in.' 
 
 ' 'Tis the poor boys,' he said, and burst into tears. 
 ' They 're in the Post Office. They 're the best boys 
 ever stepped. If I could get into the Castle and tell 
 them about the boys . . . they wouldn't maybe . . . 
 be too hard on them.' 
 
 I 'd have given anything to help him, but, sure, what 
 could I do ? A poor country priest ! God help him ! 
 I wonder what became of the boys ? 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 AFTER THE REBELLION 
 
 I BELIEVE, after all, we learnt more about the Rebellion 
 than those who were in Dublin at the time. Of course, 
 one must always miss seeing the thing by one's own eyes : 
 but beyond that all our friends wrote to us of their 
 experiences, and when we went up to Dublin in June 
 they came and told us long stories, so that we got it 
 from every point of view. 
 
 In Mayo people had gone back to their buying and 
 selling after the first hubbub was over. I had gone on 
 with my writing : there was nothing else to be done : 
 but I can safely say that the Rebellion, for many weeks, 
 was never out of my thoughts. The shootings, the de- 
 portations, the peculiar trouble as it affected me person- 
 ally, were with me aU day, going on at the back of my 
 mind as I wrote, lying down with me, haunting my 
 dreams, rising up with me, treading the daily round 
 with me : I was RebeUion-ridden. 
 
 Some one was reported to have said to Sir John 
 Maxwell that, during the week of the Rebellion, Ireland 
 and England had never been so near together : the 
 Rebellion was unpopular : but that, after three weeks 
 of his regime, the countries were never so fatally set apart. 
 
 I had lived eighteen years in England. I had come to 
 believe that affection for England and love of Ireland 
 could quite well go hand in hand. I was enthusiastically 
 pro-AUy. Both my boys were pledged to the War — ^by 
 their own choice. They had grown up to adore Ireland 
 without ever doubting that they might have an affection 
 for the country in which they were born. During those 
 years of Engl^ life we had never suffered because we 
 
 204 
 
AFTER THE REBELLION 205 
 
 were Irish. On the contrary, most of the people we 
 had met with, in literary and Bohemian circles, or those 
 who were interested in the Arts, always made much of 
 us because we were Irish. For many years every friend 
 and acquaintance we had possessed an Irish grand- 
 mother, or said they did. When we went to live in the 
 country, where the local aristocrats were cousins of the 
 Wyndhams and Lord Edward's great-granddaughters, 
 we rapped sharply over the knuckles such middle-class 
 persons as spoke in a superior manner of Ireland. 
 
 To me any bloodiness between England and Ireland 
 was unthinkable. All that belonged to the bad old days. 
 And here was '98 come again, and the people who were 
 my own people were being shot and deported by the 
 people with whom we had Uved in amity and affection 
 for eighteen long years. I had always been on the side 
 of my own people. The children had wrangled with 
 Unionist ladies and clergymen at Shankill over the Irish 
 question, almost to bitterness. They had worn the 
 Green, even flaunting it, during the English life. They 
 had trailed their coats when occasion arose. If one may 
 smile when one is telling of the enormous tragedy of the 
 Easter- Week Rebellion, it is at a memory of a tug-of-war 
 betweeil English and Irish children, when the great- 
 great-grandchildren of Lord Edward chose the English 
 side and ours headed the Irish side and refused to be 
 conquered by numbers, or to die. It was the complaint 
 of the other children, ' These Irish will not die,' when 
 there had been a mimic battle with bows and arrows. 
 Moreover, a day or two later, they were discovered 
 holding the innocent children of the Vicar in duress in 
 a coal-house, till they declared they were Irish, which 
 they were not. 
 
 We had grown up to the love of Ireland ; and now 
 came this sharp, bitter cleavage, in which, with incredible 
 rapidity, the great body of the Irish were massing them- 
 selves in a hostility against England — ^and England, a 
 great part of her, against Ireland. 
 
 It was a tragedy many shared with us. 
 
2o6 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 We had had to send Pamela away. She had taken a 
 grue, and it was almost impossible to think or talk of 
 anything else but the RebeUion. So we sent her off 
 for change of air and scene till we could follow her. 
 
 The early summer was beautiful. Some time in June 
 our solitude was broken by a visit from a friend who was 
 on her way to the Lough Derg Pilgrimage. It was the 
 loveliest time of the year, when the pinks were at their 
 whitest and me trees at their greenest and everything at 
 its cleanest and freshest. The pinks were smelling so 
 sharply sweet that one's sleep was drenched with the 
 scent. My husband went off to a court at Achill which 
 kept him out one night, and I had my friend to myself. 
 It was warm enough to sit out tUl 1 1 o'clock, which it is 
 not often in Western Ireland, and we sat talking under 
 the dim trees with the masses of pinks blurred to a broad 
 white strip, as it might be a Hnen web meandering and 
 waving aU around us in every direction, a Milky Way. 
 
 My friend was the first, except the Claremorris priest, 
 to tell me her personal experience of the Rebellion. Her 
 brother had been arrested, like a good many other people 
 whose only offence was their being in the streets. He 
 was a person of an academic mind and, being haled 
 before an officer and asked if he was a Sinn Feiner, he 
 repUed, quite truthfully, that he was nat. Asked, if he 
 had sympathy with the Sinn Feiners, he set out to explain 
 quite leisurely certain reasons why he was in sympathy 
 with the Sinn Fein ideas of self-dependence ; but it was 
 no time for academic discussions, and, at about the third 
 word, he was marched off to Richmond Barracks. There 
 his sister found him after a week, during which she had 
 tramped Dubhn with motherly soUcitude seeking him 
 high and low — he was the delicate one of the family, and 
 but newly out of an iUness. 
 
 There was no rancour in the things she said. Her 
 dehcate Spanish face, with the beautiful eyes, glimmered 
 in the dusk of the lawn, under the Ume branches. She 
 had sometimes fared ill in her search, although she had 
 a letter from Sir Matthew Nathan, the Under-Secretary, 
 
AFTER THE REBELLION 207 
 
 commending her to loyal consideration. Some of the 
 officers were uncivil, but the soldiers were ' nice little 
 boys ' — that was her phrase for them. 
 
 She told me many things which I shall not re-tell here, 
 before we got away from the tragic and harassing topic 
 to her goal, the Pilgrimage. She had a hope that I would 
 accompany her there, but that was vetoed. It was not 
 the first time she had made the Pilgrimage, nor would it 
 be the last. Those who make the Pilgrimage long to 
 make it again, because of the amazing, incredible peace 
 which comes down upon them who have made it. 
 
 The Lough Derg Pilgrimage might be recommended 
 to busy people, worldlings, politicians, men with big 
 businesses, fine ladies, generals, doctors, lawyers, all 
 manner of people whose nerves are fretted by long 
 strain. It goes on from early summer till the 15th August 
 every year on the island in Lough Derg known as St. 
 Patrick's Purgatory. There the saint entered Purgatory 
 from a grotto where he prayed, and travelled through 
 that country which is the shadow, umbra, of Heaven. 
 Thqre. is a church on the island and hostels for the 
 pilgrims and a tiny shop, and very little else except the 
 pilgrims, who come over in boat-loads from the main- 
 land aU through the sumnaer, an ever-flowing stream. 
 The island is so small and so crowded up with the church 
 and the hostels and the pilgrims that they are all on the 
 edge of falling into the lake, and as they make the 
 ' stations,' or ' beds ' where St. Patrick is supposed to 
 have rested and left the print of his feet, they are 
 crowding upon each other — ^fine ladies and gentlemen, 
 shop-aSsistants, professional men, working people — ^all 
 the classes meet at St. Patrick's Purgatory. 
 
 The Pilgrimage is really arduous, but the very old 
 and the very young of all classes are to be found there. 
 At the entrance to theJsland you doff your foot-covering 
 and go barefoot till you leave it. The ' beds ' are hoUows 
 in the rock, hard to tread and very slippery. There is 
 sand and there is mud and water-weeds. ' It was wet 
 weather when last I did the pilgrimage,' said Anita, ' and 
 
2o8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 one was so grateful for the wet sand and the little pools 
 after the sharp rocks. Every one was so kind and gentle 
 and careful, else they would have been treading on your 
 bare heels, we were so close together. 
 
 Besides the performance of the ' stations ' there is a 
 whole night of watching in the church, with rigorous 
 fasting. For twenty-four hours nothing must pass the 
 pUgrim's lip^ except an occasional sip of ' Lough Derg 
 Wine,' which is the lake water. It is supposed to have 
 the most wonderful effects of refreshing and invigorating. 
 Outside the rigorous fast there is an austere diet of bread 
 and lake-water — some three days of it. ' But oh,' said 
 Anita, ' when you leave the island and are going back 
 on the boat to the mainland you feel that you have spent 
 four days in Heaven, and when you look round on the 
 faces of your fellow passengers you feel that they have 
 been there too.' 
 
 The worldling would say it was light-headedness after 
 the fasting. But the pilgrims tell you the air is most 
 wonderful blowing from the lake and its encircling 
 mountains, and that the lake water is better than any 
 wine trodden out by the feet of man. 
 
 ' I would always send any one in trouble to Lough 
 Derg,' says Anita. ' You see the PUgrimage has been 
 going on so many hundreds of years, and all the prayers 
 ever said there seem to be gathered into the air of the 
 place, and all the faith and hope and love.' 
 
 Then she went on to tell me of the miracles. She 
 dwelt most on the miracles of the spirit, the griefs healed, 
 the rough ways made smooth, the light in darkness, the 
 uplifting. I am writing from memory and not remem- 
 bering so well events of two years ago as I should perhaps 
 of twenty years ago, which is a sign of age, I am told. 
 The one miracle I remember of a more tangible kind 
 had taken place when last she had made the Pilgrimage. 
 A girl had slipped in going round the stations and broken 
 her wrist, lliere were no appliances on the island, 
 and she obstinately refused to return to the mainland 
 to have the broken wrist set till she had finished the 
 
AFTER THE REBELLION 209 
 
 Pilgrimage. Some one bound up the wrist with, an 
 improvised bandage soaked in the lake water. Wheii at 
 last she got surgical aid and the wrist was unbandaged 
 there was no sign of injury of any kind. 
 
 We went up to Dublin on a beautiful June day, 
 passing with joy from the bareness and monotony of the 
 great bog which stretches nearly all the way from the West 
 coast to the lush greenness and the distant mountains 
 of County Dublin. People had said to us, ' You will 
 cry when you see Sackville Street ' ; numbers of people 
 had cried at their first sight of it after the burning. 
 
 I did not feel incUned to cry. I looked curiously and 
 with a sense of aloofness at the ruined city, the hoUows 
 behind the shattered windows as though a skull grinned, 
 the occasional high bit of wall standing up like a jagged 
 tooth. What I felt was the something sinister that was 
 released or came to life out of the ruins. People said 
 that at first there was a positive stench. There were 
 whispers of bodies under the ruins. Whether such or 
 any remains of them came to light I never heard. But 
 something escaped. Something of suspicion, of menace, 
 of fear has been in the air of Dublin since Easter Week. 
 No sooner am I come to the old town that I love as if it 
 were human than I feel the chUly and subtle miasma 
 that makes me afraid and distrustful. 
 
 Depression came down upon us with Dublin, and the 
 Shelbourne, which had always been so cheerful. The 
 windows yet retained the irregular star-shaped marks 
 of the bullets, a sinister reminder of what had happened. 
 When we went upstairs to our bedroom facing the Green, 
 there was a little comedy going on outside. A number 
 of small children carrying streamers of the yellow, white 
 and green tied to sticks for flag-poles, were piping 
 ' Who fears to speak of Easter Week ? ' Now and again 
 an enormous Dublin Metropohtan policeman gave them 
 chase amid shrill peals of laughter from the children — 
 after which they formed up and the same thing was 
 acted over again. 
 
 We hardly smiled, although it was funny. In the 
 
2IO THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 morning we awoke to the whistling of a window-cleaner. 
 The tune he whistled was the forbidden pne ; of course 
 it might have been ' Who Fears to speak of '98,' the rebel 
 song of Dr. J. K. Ingram of Trinity College which had 
 had no more rebel significance before the Rising than 
 Moore's Melodies or ' The Wearin' o' the Green,' but of 
 course, as there were no words and ' Who Fears to Speak 
 of Easter Week' is sung to the same air, one could not tell. 
 
 We sat down to dinner at the next table to Mrs. 
 T. P. O'Connor and George Moore. Mrs. T. P. soon 
 came and joined us. I beHeve Mr. Moore was quite 
 wiUing to do the same. He showed an interest in our 
 party while he stayed and he deplored to Mrs. T. P. 
 his ' crossness ' about a permission when I was editing 
 the Cabinet of Irish Literature, but it was not the 
 ' crossness ' which made me avoid Mr. Moore's con- 
 sidering gaze, as though he was about to descend upon us. 
 Mrs. T. P. said he had such a feeling for my rehgious 
 poetry. Well — ^perhaps he had. Queer things happen. 
 
 Feeling was very excited. There was something 
 feverish about every one. The Celtic Irish laughed 
 while they told you the most tragic and pitiful things, 
 a laughter which had tears in it. The Anglo-Irish 
 Unionists one met were very bitter. They did not 
 think enough men had been shot. They would have 
 shot every one of them — ^and so on. 
 
 Over in the Green there were the shallow trenches 
 which the rebels had thrown up while they held the 
 Green — ^I was told afterwards that they were only for 
 the sentries who commanded the approaches — covered 
 up like graves. ' 
 
 In the days that followed we went over all the ground 
 of the Rebellion. We had peculiar facilities. The two 
 areas in which the fight had been hottest were Ball's 
 Bridge and North King Street. In the latter narrow 
 street there was desperate fighting. It took the troops 
 thirty hours to gain a hundred and twenty yards of the 
 street, hand-to-hand fighting, all the time. 
 
 Close by North King Street are the church and 
 
AFTER THE REBELLION 211 
 
 monastery of the Capuchins, the special priests of the 
 poor in Dublin. Attached is the Father Mathew Hall 
 whicL provides a meeting and recreation-place for the 
 people. In Dublin you meet the friars walking about 
 in their habits as in a foreign city ; unfortunately, as a 
 concession to the climate they wear boots and carry 
 umbrellas — a sad tumble-down from the picturesque. 
 
 A great friend of ours. Father John, had rashly gone 
 off on the American Mission in IVIay 19 14. Up to that 
 time we had had many visits from him and Father Jose, 
 a Spanish aristocrat and scholar, who had come to the 
 Dublin house of his Order to consult some ancient records 
 in the library of the Franciscans on Merchants' Quay. 
 Velasquez might have painted Father Jose. After 
 ' John,' as he called him, left, he drifted away to Oxford, 
 saying mournfully that he did not like ' the Churches 
 Street without John.' 
 
 Father John, who is a chaplain in Palestine now, I met 
 with in this way. In the first winter of our return, while 
 we were at Dalkey, I went into the church one morning 
 for Mass. There was a ' Mission ' going on, A Mission 
 sermon is usually very strong meat, designed to bring 
 sinners to repentance, and I resigned myself to listen, or 
 not to listen. To my delight and amazement the sermon 
 was simple, tender, and full of unction, using the term 
 in its theological sense. The subject was Prayer. 
 There was not a threat nor a lurid hint in the quite 
 short and very much to the point discourse. I called 
 into a shop afterwards and, during a friendly chat, spoke 
 of- the sermon. ' Oh, it was Father John,' said the good 
 women ; ' you ought to have heard Father William. The 
 people here wouldn't be bothered listening to Father 
 John, he 's too quiet.' ' Quiet ' in the Irish sense means 
 gentle, or mild. I know the people expect a Mission 
 sermon to be hot and strong and feel defrauded if they 
 don't get it. 
 
 That afternoon Father John came to call, and I told him 
 of my experience. He capped the tale with one of his own. 
 One of those Mission mornings an old lady, deliciously 
 
212 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 harrowed by a lurid sermon, fainted. Father John, who 
 was ' off ' that morning, assisted to bring her round. 
 The first thing she said when she recovered consciousness 
 was : ' Sure I wouldn't have minded if it was the bad 
 preacher's day, but wasn't it too bad for me to lose the 
 half of the good preacher's sermon.' 
 
 Father John was a great tennis-player. It used to be 
 a sight to see him playing in his habit on a hot summer 
 day. Once, to the scandal of an EngUsh convert lady, 
 he took off his little skuU-cap and flung it on the grass. 
 ' Oh, but,' said she, ' they are supposed never to take off 
 their cappas. He cannot be aware of what he has done.' 
 However, the CathoUc born did not share her concern. 
 
 Well, the War came, and there was Father John stuck 
 in America, and he the very ideal man for a chaplain, 
 being very human and a man of the world, so to speak, 
 very tolerant and with a deHghtful sense of humour. 
 Some time in 1915, when the need for chaplains was 
 urgent, I told my Pamela to write to Father John for 
 me and teU him to come home. He repHed by return : 
 ' If you can get me taken on as a chaplain I will come.' 
 I wrote to Cardinal Bourne and received an encouraging 
 reply : subject to the consent of his Superior the chap- 
 laincy was his. I sent on the letter, and when we were 
 at the Shelbourne in that March of 191 6, I received a 
 cablegram : ' SaiHng Monday. John.' 
 
 He got back just in time for the Rebellion and chap- 
 lain's work in the streets of Dublin, where he litde 
 expected it. 
 
 The Father Mathew HaU had been used as a Red 
 Cross Hospital during the Rebellion Week The dark 
 stains were still on the boarded floor the day we were 
 there, while in a room off the hall the competitions for 
 the Uttle ' Feis ' — i.e. festival of music, singing, and 
 poetry like the Welsh Eisteddfod — ^which is held every 
 year at the Father Mathew HaU, were going on. The 
 competitors were small children, some of them wearing 
 the yellow, white, and green, oddly, in many cases, side 
 by side with the regimental button of a soldier father. 
 
AFTER THE REBELLION 213 
 
 Pretending ignorance we asked one small boy what 
 the knot of ribbon meant. ' Irish Republican colours, 
 ma'am,' he answered. I had already been rebuked for 
 talking about a Sinn Fein flag. 
 
 Accompanied by Father John we went on the track of 
 the Rebellion. We climbed up the stairs of the Louth 
 Dairy in North King Street, to see the bullet holes in 
 the wall where what was called ' The Affair in North King 
 Street ' took place. We climbed to the high turret-like 
 room of Monks's Bakery, riddled through with bullet- 
 holes, where an intrepid sniper had kept picking oflE the 
 soldiers who were trying to mount a machine-gun on the 
 roof of the Broadstone Station which should sweep North 
 King Street and Church Street. Many things we saw 
 and heard which are better unpublished, for the present, 
 at all events. 
 
 From this dreary pilgrimage we went on to tea at a 
 Unionist house full of wounded officers. The days were 
 full of such contrasts. All manner of people came to 
 see us in our hotel — ^now Lord MacDonnell, again a 
 Nationalist M.P. : young soldiers from the Curragh : a 
 Judge of the High Court ; an editor who had been 
 allowed his first bite by that sporting Provost Marshal, 
 liOrd Decies : writers and artists and playwrights. The 
 Shelbourne was crowded with soldiers. One day Father 
 John came in to tea in his habit and sandals, bare-headed, 
 and was stared at curiously. 
 
 But everywhere there was the feeling of distrust, of 
 suspicion. One day I was told that I myself had been 
 arrested— a confusion with Dr. Kathleen Lynn, I sup- 
 pose — ^and I reaUy felt as though I had. 
 
 Many people would not talk of the Rebellion, and they 
 gave one the creepiness more than the ones who talked. 
 The big man whom I met at a crossing — one of the finest 
 and bravest men in Dublin, who shook his head with a 
 sick look when I asked him if he could tell me anything, 
 for I knew from the newspapers that he had touched 
 against the Sinn Feiners : ' No, no,' he said, ' I can't 
 talk about it. They were green boys. We were 
 
214 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 digging them up for weeks afterwards, out of gardens 
 and dunghills, and all sorts of places.' He had got 
 a grue. 
 
 The most cheerful thing at the Shelbourne during 
 that visit was Barry O'Brien. We were delighted to find 
 him there, going about briskly, silver-haired and rosy- 
 faced, with an incessant twinkle of fun in his eyes. He 
 would come in Vith his hat on — ^he was always afraid of 
 a draught — and put it down on the piano or the nearest 
 convenient point. We talked as though we knew that 
 we should have no further chance of talking. He drove 
 the Shelbourne nearly frantic, demanding roaring fires 
 on a June day and shutting up the windows, always 
 telling the waiters that ' this lady,' meaning me, wanted 
 a fire or felt a draught. He loved to recall the day, long 
 ago, when he and John O'Leary, the old Fenian Chief, 
 came to see me at Ealing and found me working in the 
 garden. We had to go in because Barry O'Brien felt 
 the garden draughty. We had to shut out Pat, my 
 St. Bernard, because Barry O'Brien was afraid of dogs. 
 ' Good Lord of Heaven ! ' said O'Leary, ' I never knew 
 a man afraid of as many things as you, O'Brien.' ' Ah,' 
 said I, ' if you were afraid, you 'd be afraid to say you 
 were.' 
 
 One day we had a couple of Hussar boys from the 
 Curragh, who, with our own soldier boy and some girls, 
 were enjoying themselves. I fled from them to Barry 
 O'Brien. ' Good God,' I said, ' what have I to do with 
 those boys ? They are too young for me ! ' He recog- 
 nised the quotation from the beloved Lord Edward with 
 delight. 
 
 Old Parnellites, we trusted and respected each other. 
 He had a great admiration for my working powers. I 
 used to come down early to a dismantled and undusted 
 lounge to get my bit of writing done. I would look up 
 to his ' Well, you are a wonderful woman ! ' Once I was 
 reviewing Mr. John ParneU's Memories of his great 
 brother for the Observer. ' I wish you 'd lend me that 
 when you 're done with it,' he said, ' for John Redmond. 
 
AFTER THE REBELLION 215 
 
 He asked me the other day if I had it.' I took up my 
 pen and wrote in the book, ' John Redmond from 
 Katharine Tynan,' and handed it to him. I had only 
 seen Mr. Redmond once since my marriage, but we had 
 been ParneUites together. The old fealty never slackened 
 through the years. 
 
 ' Don't talk to those English boys,' he said to Pamela 
 one day. ' If you saw my chap in the Navy you 'd never 
 look at them again.' 
 
 Again he was offering Pam a large bribe if she would 
 stand up and repeat ' Easter Week ' aloud in the lounge 
 full of soldiers and old general officers. 
 
 It all seems very little to tell, without the exuberant, 
 boyish gaiety that accompanied it. The Good Com- 
 rade, the dear, old, joyous Boy — what a gap he has left ! 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 JOHN HIGGINS 
 
 Some time that June an article appeared in the New 
 Witness describing some phases of the Dublin Rising. 
 The name was new to me, but the description was so 
 vivid as to excite my interest in John Higgins, whoever 
 he might be. I wrote to him at the New Witness office, 
 and a little later I had his reply. He was a young man 
 in rather delicate health, living on a little western farm, 
 not many miles from me as the crow flies, near French- 
 park in Co. Roscommon. He told me in one of his early 
 letters that he was threatened with consumption and 
 had had haemorrhages in the past — ' One of these days it 
 wiU get me,' he wrote — ^but the DubHn doctor whom he 
 had gone up to consult, and so had happened to be in 
 Dublin for Easter Week, had told him he was free from 
 consumption. He had a gift for the Thing Seen. He 
 ought to have been a war correspondent in the Great 
 War instead of hungering and thirsting for Life on a four- 
 acre farm in Roscommon in the terrible climate, starved 
 for intellectual hfe and the society of those of his own 
 interests and aspirations. It is never as bad in Irish 
 rural life as it would be in a corresponding life elsewhere, 
 for there are always a few to understand and sympathise. 
 A priest or two, a doctor, clever and young, who took 
 John Higgins's case as though it were his own, who, 
 indeed, had had a sanatorium cure himself, so knew how 
 to sympathise : relatives who loved and admired him : 
 such compensations he had. 
 
 I read tiiat first letter of his to Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, 
 and she it was who set me on to think of a cure for John 
 Higgins. After some correspondence I asked him if he 
 
JOHN HIGGINS 217 
 
 would go to South Africa or to California if it was made 
 possible for him. He was very reluctant : a sanatorium, 
 then, since he was not prepared to go far away. This 
 was A. E.'s suggestion. * If he intends to live in Ireland, 
 and which of us does not, let him be cured in Ireland.' 
 That, also, he was unwilling to consider. Finally his 
 heart's wish came to light. He wanted to go to London, 
 to try his fortune as a journalist and writer. Life — in 
 that sense — ^was what he was starving for. He was very 
 sensible about it. There was plenty of clerical work to 
 be had since so many had gone to the War. He could 
 live in that way while he waited for his chance with 
 Fleet Street and the publishers. 
 
 In the old house where I am writing I discovered the 
 other day a record of weather and crops, and the arrival 
 of flowers and leafage, kept with meticulous care for the 
 year 1830. I quote it to show the conditions of weather 
 in which John Higgins and many like him languish. At 
 that time, apparently, wheat was grown on land which is 
 now let for grazing by cattle and sheep. I have ofteri 
 wondered how they live on it. When you see a green 
 spot it is moss — ^if moss had commercial value what 
 money there would be in Connaught ! Thistles and 
 nettles grow rankly : and some of the fields are useless 
 because of the serried ranks of rushes. A peasant 
 explained to me that mushrooms did not grow here 
 because of the poverty of the land — mushrooms, which 
 in their caprice grow on a bare chalk cliff and sand dunes 
 more freely than on richer pastures ! But wheat — good 
 lack : 
 
 The owner of Brookhill's record of the weather in the 
 year following Catholic Emancipation reminds one of 
 AUingham's rhyme : 
 
 January bitter very, 
 
 February damp, sirs, 
 
 March blew 
 
 And April snew. 
 
 May has got the cramp, sirs. 
 
2i8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 He begins : 
 
 The Winter of 1329-30 — ^Veiy severe frost ; snow fell at six 
 different periods, from the close of December 1829 to the close 
 of February 1830. Very little rain fell, but the season was other- 
 wise so severe as to kill most Bays, Arbutus, Laurestinus, and 
 Aristotelia ; Italian Cypress and Cistus also suffered. 
 
 March was cold, windy, and rainy till the close, when there 
 were a few days qf brilliant sunshine. 
 
 April — ^The first fortnight of this month was so fine that it 
 was the most favourable seed-time I recollect ; the ground being 
 in a good state to receive the corn which, consequently, showed 
 a braird in nine days. Showery weather came on, as is not 
 infrequent, at the Flowering of the Black Thorn. The rivers 
 became swollen with rain. 
 
 May — The first week of this month was Fair ; from the 8th 
 to the 31st vast quantities of rain fell. A great flood on the 27th. 
 The last week was partictdarly cold and wet, vnth high and 
 blighting winds. No potatoes were sown in burned land from 
 the constant rain up to the 31st of May. 
 
 June the First — ^The flowers of the White Thorn, Lilac, and 
 Laburnum disappeared prematurely at this time by reason of the 
 blighting winds and cold rains. The first week of this month was 
 showery ; from the 7th to the nth, a few fine days, when the 
 weather became unnaturally cold as in March. Trees, except in 
 sheltered places, having their fohage blighted and vsdthered on 
 the side exposed to the North- West. Genial or Summer warmth 
 began on the 26th and lasted till the end of the month. 
 
 July — ^This month was perhaps the wettest in the memory of 
 Man. The rivers became flooded. On the 7th there was sleet 
 and some days throughout as cold as March. About the 25th 
 there was an extraordinary transition to the extreme of heat so 
 that the weather became quite oppressive for five days, three of 
 which were of brilliant sunshine with an almost Syrian wind. 
 The last tiyo or three days of the month were again cold 
 and wet. 
 
 August — This month was, with the exception of four or five 
 days of sunshine towards the middle of the month, showery, 
 wet, and vsdndy. On Friday the 27th the rain was excessive as 
 well as incessant, continuing throughout the night and accom- 
 panied vnth 3l cold wind that might be expected in February. 
 Rivers and low ground inundated and the crops materially 
 injured. 
 
JOHN HIGGINS 219 
 
 (Nevertheless the good gentleman ' commenced reaping my 
 own wheat on August 30th.') 
 
 September — ^This month was one of constant wet and storm. 
 The quantity of rain was even still greater than any of the pre- 
 ceding months, which, since May, were the wettest I remember. 
 The storms before and about the Equinox were continuous and 
 did much harm to the crops. The fall of the leaf began three 
 weeks earlier than usual, and swallows began to congregate on 
 the i6th. More than half the oat crop remained uncut at the 
 close of the month. 
 
 October was fine and mild, but November was as bad as ever. 
 On the 19th there was a storm unequalled since 1822. December 
 was wet and cold with some snow. 
 
 Although Mr. Lambert talks as if the year were an 
 exceptional year, it tallies very well with my experience 
 of the Western climate, now a three-years-old one, with 
 a few extra months added. The amazing thing is 
 that every one in the West does not die of the weather 
 and the immense discomfort it entails ; the slough into 
 which the roads turn in winter, the worse slough of the 
 little boreens by the cottage doors, through which the 
 school children and every one else, coming and going, 
 must walk, mired over the ankles. The second amaze- 
 ment is that any one ever wrings money out of such soil. 
 The third is not that the people go away, but that 
 they come back. And — ^wonderful ! — the school-children 
 are clean and prettily dressed, with bows of ribbon in 
 their hair ; the girls make their show of feminine vanities 
 like any other girls in happier climes. The men, per- 
 haps because they have to work in the mire, make less 
 headway against it. They walk even in dry weather as 
 though they felt the weight of the mud. 
 
 What the rain must be and the mud, and the soaked 
 sponge that takes the place of solid earth to delicate 
 lungs, I can only dimly imagine. It was bad enough 
 for Mr. Lambert in the spacious and kindly house I 
 inhabit for a time — I don't believe he ever saved those 
 oats — ^but for dwellers in the little farmhouses and 
 cottages that cling to the surface of the bog like a gold- 
 
220 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 winged bird — ^it must be hardly endurable. Or so it 
 seems to those who only look on it from outside; the 
 people themselves seem happy enough. 
 
 Through the kindness of some friends arrangements 
 were made for John Higgins to try his fortune in London : 
 he was so keen about it. He came to see me in the 
 autumn of 191 6 — a. tall, fair young man, with a hectic 
 flush in his cheeks. He was stiU quite sure that he had 
 not consumption. He stayed the night, and the next 
 morning we had a long talk by the fire in my little work- 
 room. He went away very gaily. Our plans were 
 progressing. ' It will not be long now,' he said, as he 
 glanced back at me, going down the steps to the car which 
 was to take him to the station. I never saw him again. 
 
 I held him back from going during that terrible winter 
 of 1916-1917. I conjectured him looking for my letter, 
 the one which should give him his freedom, but I did 
 not write. When, about the 25 th of February, an 
 illusive softness and warmth came, and the soUd walls of 
 snow by all the hedgerows began to run, I wrote to him 
 joyfully, bidding him God-speed, and telling him how to 
 proceed when he got to London, where friends awaited him. 
 
 A few days later I had a letter to say that the doctor 
 would not hear of his travelling yet. He was in bed, and 
 there had been haemorrhage again. For a while we both 
 pretended that the great adventure was only postponed. 
 I believe he knew all the time, before the kindest of young 
 doctors broke it to him, with a greater suffering in the 
 telling than he had in the hearing. Whatever chance he 
 had had of life had been nipped off short by the deadly 
 cruelty of that winter. To read his letters over again 
 is terribly pathetic. He had such hopes from time to 
 time. Once he is in magnificent spirits, and so eager 
 to be off, but must submit first to an examination by 
 his doctor. The examination revealed that he had a 
 temperature of 104, and so he was put to bed instead 
 of flying off into the world he longed for. 
 
 The days of his decline were the days of the making 
 of a saint. He did everything he was asked to do, 
 
JOHN HIGGINS ttt 
 
 most patiently. He took part in all the prayers and 
 religious exercises made for his recovery, without, I think, 
 any real belief that he would live. One of the most 
 touching things was his struggle against the relief given 
 him by morphia, his reducing the drug by minute 
 degrees till he could do without it altogether, lest he 
 should grow to depend on it — as though he had time 
 for that ! 
 
 Friends kept him supplied with books and all kinds 
 of reading through that spring and summer. He was 
 a voracious reader and he enjoyed his reading, although 
 after a time he was, as he said himself, ' only able to lie 
 down sitting up.' He described himself as in a sultan's 
 bed of pillows and cushions while he wrote his long letters, 
 about politics, about books, all manner of things. Of 
 the books he most enjoyed was How Jonas Found His 
 Enemy by Dr. Greville MacDonald, a spiritual romance 
 to which he brought a spiritual eye and understanding : 
 another was Shane Leslie's delightfully vivacious End 
 of a Chapter. Among the friends who provided him 
 with reading in generous bundles was Mrs. Maude 
 Egerton King. He wrote me long critical letters of the 
 books he read. I think I must have sent them to people 
 to read, for I remember a letter of Sarah Grand's in 
 which she praised his criticism, but I cannot lay my hand 
 upon it nor upon other letters of political interest, so 
 they are perhaps hidden away in envelopes inscribed to 
 me in other people's handwriting. The only sustained 
 piece of criticism I can find is of my own Middle Tears. 
 I like this bit where he says of John O'Mahony : 
 
 * All those who love the lonely places and the long 
 roads have an immense attraction for me. He reads as 
 though Synge had created him.' 
 
 When the winter that had killed him at last relaxed her 
 deadly grip, and spring came as never before, with the 
 flowers of February, March, and April, all in the lap of 
 May, and tumbling over each other lest they should miss 
 an appearance, he longed to be out ' to see the greenery, 
 to smell the scent of the earth.' He had his wish. He 
 
222 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 was taken into the garden for a little while on die 1st of 
 June, and that was his last outing. 
 
 I had been telling Francis Ledwidge about John 
 Higgins in my letters to him. A letter dated 31st May 
 1 91 7 refers to this. ' I am sad when I think on the boy 
 from Roscommon. He will remember you when he 
 comes into his Kingdom. Mention my name to him, 
 saying how sorry I am not to have known him, and that 
 I hope he has iiot any pain.' 
 
 John Higgins died on the 13th of July 1917, taking 
 with him certain trusts of mine, which I know he keeps 
 faithfully. I think of him with Francis Ledwidge and 
 another young Irishman, Richard O'NeUl, who fell in 
 action in the autumn of 19 16. Richard O'Neill answered 
 an advertisement of mine for one of my books which was 
 out of print. That was while we were still living in 
 England. He had the book, and sent it to me joyfully 
 refusing to take any payment for it. I believe he told 
 me that he was a bank clerk in Norwich. He was very 
 keen about literary matters, and he wrote that he and a 
 friend used to tramp the country talking poetry and 
 books. He ended a letter with this charming phrase : 
 ' If you ever want any one to do anything for you — to 
 stand up to lions for you, to kill an enemy of yours, to go 
 through fire and water for you, he or I will do it ' — ' he ' 
 being his friend. 
 
 I heard nothing of him for some years tUl he wrote to 
 me in 1916, telling me he had got his commission. I 
 think he was so proud of it that he had to write and tell 
 me. Only a few letters had passed between us when a 
 box of sweets I had sent him was returned marked ' In 
 Hospital.' A little later I saw that he had died of wounds. 
 
 These three I Hke to think of as guarding from Heaven 
 certain interests of mine. ' Do not worry about your 
 boys,' John Higgins had written to me, ' I look upon 
 myself in a way as their trustee.' He had the hardest 
 path of the three to traverse in the long, slow dying. 
 I know they aU remember me now that they have come 
 into their Kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE REBELLION AS SEEN BY JOHN HIGGINS 
 
 For a book about the Irish Rebellion of 1916, which I 
 hope to write some day, I asked John Higgins to tell me 
 his story. This is what he, wrote : 
 
 ' How do you begin writing about a rebellion ? Beside 
 it war is a comparatively easy matter, an affair of pro- 
 gressions. Human interest is led in a fortifying way 
 along a sort of emotional path graduated with incident, 
 each event going one better than its predecessor. From 
 the casus belli to the diplomatic queries, to the scare 
 headings, to the Parliamentary announcements, to the 
 lonely soldier with a bullet in his heart across the 
 frontier, and so from the confusing tangle of ambiguities 
 and strident journalese to the last step — ^the straight 
 issue of war. It does not so much break out as stand 
 aloof to be broken into at the end of a sequence. But 
 rebellion is a different thing ; the essence of it is sur- 
 prise. You ask for a match under the old regime and 
 light your pipe under the Provisional Government : and, 
 because the contagion of surprise spares no one, gentle 
 or simple, it is impossible to reproduce happily the 
 sudden and violent contrasts that burst above the level 
 surface of our routine when a few hundred men in dark 
 green swept into the General Post Office on Easter 
 Monday of 1916, saluted an unfamiliar flag in one long, 
 racking voUey, and proclaimed our country a Sovereign 
 State. 
 
 ' It was all done under our eyes in the midday light, 
 and, as it so happens (it is almost like ritual with us) that 
 you cannot leave the city decently without first wasting 
 a few minutes at Nelson's Pillar, O'Connell Street had 
 
 223 
 
224 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 half-choked itself with Bank Holiday folk, motors chasing 
 northwards to the Fairyhouse Races, overladen trams 
 flying eastwards and southwards to Howth, Sutton, and 
 Tallaght, side-cars plying everywhere, and great crowds 
 and processions of people peculiar in their enjoyment, 
 loitering here and there, industriously doing nothing. 
 For all these the volte-face might have been arranged to 
 startle them out of their duU, thoughtless wits : but 
 not one man or woman of us had, I think, an idea then 
 that we were looking at anything more than an uncon- 
 sidered prank. We could not see that every moment 
 was a historic moment, every incident a link in an epic. 
 For, beKeve me, you can take humanity by the throat, as 
 it were, and leave it incredulous : and men and women 
 are born into the world, grow up, niarry, and die with- 
 out ever getting a grip on the realities that meet them 
 daily in the streets and newspapers as movements and 
 propaganda. To our unreceptive intelligence the 
 attempt to blow up the Pillar was — even as an artistic 
 protest — something of a nuisance, spoiling the holiday. 
 Everything was, from that naive standpoint, wilful and 
 wrong. Upon the spectators the noise and alarms pro- 
 duced a frantic disintegration, filling up the street, 
 followed by a regrouping here and there to which indi- 
 viduals were drawn like atoms to their affinity. Windows 
 were being riven with butt ends of rifles ; somebody was 
 reading a manifesto in the sincere, dignified style of 
 Pearse ; reinforcements kept pouring out of Abbey 
 Street, where employers and customers alike had been 
 bundled into the street and Volunteer guards stood on 
 duty. From Cork Hill there kept coming a nervous 
 rapping of rifles which, by and by, extended to other 
 parts of the city near and remote. Across the open 
 space near the Pillar one could catch the flash of bayonets 
 inside the Post Office, and note the dive and bob of 
 heads back and over as the intruders piled up material 
 for palisades — all was movement and breathless excite- 
 ment, but without confusion. It was like a stage setting 
 for some stupendous notion of pageantry. With the 
 
REBELLION AS SEEN BY JOHN HIGGINS 225 
 
 long, barking volley the curtain went up, as it were, on 
 a turning-point in history. Above our startled heads 
 waved a new flag — ^the old flag — ^with an officer standing 
 proudly by, bareheaded. At that moment the dream 
 that had been dreamt through countless generations of 
 our island story took form and substance, and the men 
 who had taken for their portion the sorrows of Caithlin- 
 ni-Houlihan looked into the infant face of their ideal 
 incarnate. We see it now in the retrospect with its 
 solemnity, its terror and wonder, but for the moment it 
 was lost on us. Whatever malignant god controls the 
 unmanly promptings that lurk — despite every pretence — 
 in the recesses of our humanity, was even then active. 
 Perhaps it is to such uncertainties that all strange enter- 
 prises are born. Men fled from the anger of the stars 
 when Caesar died that Rome might live, and we, who 
 looked upon the cradle of the Irish Republic, looked — 
 at least in bewilderment. 
 
 * Everywhere the same scene reproduced itself. The 
 crowd flying from O'ConneU Street, ran full tUt into a 
 similar crowd hurrying from Liberty HaU. Around the 
 Castle it was impossible to know where to go or which 
 force was in possession of the building. A narrow 
 stjfeet off the river brought us to a lane-way opening on 
 Dame Street. From an archway beside the Empire 
 Theatre we tried to take our bearings while stray buUets 
 ricochetting from the walls fell in the street outside. 
 We could not, of course, see the Castle, but the City 
 HaU was plainly in possession of the Volunteers, a cir- 
 cumstance which led us to believe that the more im- 
 portant building was theirs also. That subject was one 
 of warm discussion for forty-eight hours afterwards ; 
 the number of people who saw the successful storming of 
 the Castle gates surpasses beUef. Except for a few 
 sentries inside the railings, Stephen's Green was quieter 
 on Monday evening than I ever remember seeing it. 
 Occasionally a Volunteer or two would pass along the 
 walks by the lake, but as for that liberally circulated 
 activity of trench-digging, I could see nothing of it. 
 
226 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 By the way, those trenches are something of a mystery. 
 For the life of me I could never find them. I did come 
 across some broken earth, but it struck me as being less a 
 trench than a London clerk's imitation of a potato furrow. 
 
 ' When a party of Lancers appeared at the Rotunda 
 an old sea-captain, just arrived from the home of revolu- 
 tions, South America, suggested crossing over to the 
 Post Ofiice side — ^the larboard side, he called it. 
 Cavalry against a fortress had a touch of Quixote about 
 it. Their officer, a good-looking, finicking sort of man, 
 was fitting on his gloves as the party trotted along. 
 Somewhere beyond the Hammam Hotel they were met 
 by a voUey that brought down some horses and sent the 
 remainder clattering away in retreat. Of the casualties 
 one was the dandyish officer, who passed, poor fellow, 
 into the shades with the second glove unadjusted. 
 Further up the street another man reeled in his saddle 
 and fell. Above the corner, whence came the discharge, 
 a Uttle cloud of smoke curled casually upwards. For die 
 present the fighting was done, but we, who were hoping 
 against reason that something would emerge at last, 
 — some counsel, some compromise — ^to settle everything, 
 saw in that one incident the irrevocable step, the gauntlet 
 backed by the deed — ^the first challenge of the infgnt 
 State. 
 
 ' All that evening crowds paraded the streets, watching 
 Volunteer companies with fixed bayonets marching to 
 their posts. The Government might have thrown up 
 the sponge, so completely was it eclipsed ; not a soldier, 
 not a policeman in view. The more adventurous 
 clustered round the Post Office, exchanging jokes and 
 gossip with the defenders, scrunching plate glass under 
 their feet, and making a respectable show of unconcern 
 at the httle colonies of rifles staring at them out of 
 every window. Until nightfall, when the people began 
 to melt from the streets, everything was quiet except 
 for a forlorn rifle-shot in the distance, but the sense of 
 expectancy was strong. There was a general impression 
 that the mihtary were being hurried hot-foot from the 
 
REBELLION AS SEEN BY JOHN HIGGINS 227 
 
 Curragh for a midnight attack, and on the strength of 
 that feeling I doubt if there was a single unshuttered 
 window in all Dublin that night. By midnight the 
 looters were providing a strong counter-attraction, 
 burning whatever could not be stolen. At Earl Street 
 and Abbey Street groups of Volunteers in shirt sleeves 
 filled up barricades, the men sweating and coughing in 
 the smoke of a burning shop that swept in low, dense 
 masses along the ground. Now and again the red 
 shirt and brass helmet of a fireman would emerge from 
 the murkiness to take counsel with his fellows, when 
 some fresh outbreak threw red tongues of fire, lascivious 
 and insinuating, into the night. With an east wind 
 blowing, the Liffey at full tide was distinctly a person- 
 ality ; but for a genuine all-round smeU commend me 
 to burning leather. In the unusual darkness the city 
 gave one an uneasy impression of death and abandon- 
 ment, but where the Post Office showed stolid in a halo 
 of errant smoke, with never a movement or sign of 
 occupation, there was always a sense of waiting on the 
 alert and watching the night. Upon that building the 
 minds and tongues of the whole city ran during the 
 anxious hours. Thtfons et origo of the passionate dream, 
 its fate stood for the fate of the whole adventure. We 
 sat and smoked for hours in the starriness with rifles 
 chattering from Church Street and the Courts, trying to 
 picture as we might the adopted home of so much 
 surging faith and devotion. Night and the stars and 
 our brothers in arms, what was and what might be, the 
 chivalry, the madness, the inevitable end. There were 
 moments, I think, when the whole mystery of our 
 country's ideal stood faintly luminous but illegible by 
 our side, when we seemed to look upon the sanctified 
 heart that in every century beats for an instant, a world's 
 romance of sacrifice and sadness — ^and dies. 
 
 ' As far as the north side is concerned everything had 
 been set in order for an effective resistance during the 
 night. A motley but quite forbidding barricade barred 
 the way at Cabra Bridge. When out of curiosity I 
 
228 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 requested to be allowed to pass along, I was firmly but 
 quite politely held up by a sentry, a youth in mufti, with 
 no equipment save a single-barrel shotgun — a formidable 
 weapon at close quarters, but otherwise useless — and a 
 bag of the material that my grandmother used in her 
 wholesome feather beds, crammed with cartridges. His 
 impartiality was undoubted, for a very smart buggy, 
 which almost deserved to get through for sheer display of 
 elan, had to yield to the persuasions of the grim sentry 
 and his shotgun. There was quite a display of suburban 
 parlour furniture in that barricade, serviceable sofas and 
 chairs, and in the middle our grocer's pony cart looking 
 very plebeian and out of place. Seemingly there is a 
 special Providence that overlooks the affairs of small 
 grocers — ^a very over-taxed Providence I imagine— but it 
 is noteworthy, in the context, that although the more 
 luxurious elements were mere faggot wood by Tuesday 
 evening, the familiar cart delivered a dozen of stout to 
 some thirsty students next door on Thursday morning. 
 At the Park Road Bridge, after an effort to spring a mine 
 had proved futile, a barricade of barrels, boxes, and wire 
 was erected. TTie sentry there, who might have been 
 specially imported from Mexico for the occasion, with 
 his swarthy face, picturesque muffler and hat, comme il 
 faut, knew his business. There was no exit — orders ! 
 He was very sorry, but it was the Provisional Government 
 now ! Inconvenient — yes ! But would I please step 
 back — as if, with a bayonet at my chin, I had any intention 
 of step^ping forward. To every such defence groups of 
 young men and women came strolling, their confidence — 
 the sunshine was like a spray — ^inversely proportional to 
 the omens. There was much laughing and small talk, 
 many rumours of invasion and Volunteer dissensions, 
 amateurist impressions of street fighting ; in a word, all 
 the irrelevant chatter that springs disconcertingly from 
 our headless democracy brought in quick, familiar contact 
 with unforeseen crises. 
 
 ' All that morning O'Connell Street kept carnival as if 
 in derision of the coup d'etat and the imminent conse- 
 
REBELLION AS SEEN BY JOHN HIGGINS 229 
 
 quences. At Moore Street corner the public-houses were 
 being fast sold out. One met drunken men and women 
 frequently. Drapery shops, jewellers, sweet and tobacco 
 shops, spirit grocers in the vicinity of the Provisional 
 Government's headquarters, had all been or were being 
 looted. The swaying ant-hill of humanity, that came 
 in its hundreds to look on the graver aspect, had its 
 attention undermined by the wanton ruffianism of the 
 gutters of DubHn minding number one. Men hawked 
 watches shamelessly at so many a shilling ; urchins in tall 
 hats played at being knockabout comedians, golfing 
 swells, or soldiers, running to and fro among the crowd, 
 pausing only to get astraddle of the two dead horses. 
 Unclean women in shawls bore off freights of costly furs 
 and finery ; one old hag literally dripped alarm clocks. 
 Outside a fancy-store something similar to a football 
 scrum open to the sexes was taking place. Heaven alope 
 knows the motley loot that came hurtling and splintering 
 through the windows to the crowd waiting ravenously 
 below — ^picture-frames, ornamental knick-knacks, books, 
 toilet outfits, royalty on postcards, Teddy Bears, hand- 
 cameras. It rained fountain pens. 
 
 ' So it was that for the moment the seriousness of the 
 emergency was smothered in ridicule. But, occasionally, 
 the curious throng would fly apart as little convoys of 
 motor-cars came whooping warningly through the street 
 to gUde under the sagging strands of barbed wire held 
 purposely aloft on bayoneted rifles. A clear space before 
 the Post Office seemed reserved for the professional con- 
 fidences of the leaders, aU of whom looked refreshingly 
 neat and well-equipped. Despatch-riders came and 
 withdrew, commissariat carts, sometimes bearing un- 
 impeachably loyal names, rumbled up, mysterious vans, 
 strongly guarded, followed, the whole varied activity 
 going to a note of unrelieved seriousness and strictest 
 military observance. Yet, if you believe me, whether it 
 was due to the flashing sunshine or the raticous foolery of 
 the mob, there was something unreal about the ensemble, 
 something almost indecent. If I fail to make this 
 
230 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 picture convincing, it is because it was not convincing 
 at the time. For a few seconds of the preceding night 
 one seemed to have vision and understanding ; but, in 
 the morning, as if God was withholding the interpreting 
 talent that sees into the very heart of life, the whole 
 scene swam before and around us like some colossal 
 melange of high purpose and buffoonery, austerity and 
 profanity, mysticism and vagabondage, blend for blend, 
 all thrown headlong by the Devil's own stage manager 
 into the proudest street in Europe. I know a dozen men 
 wi^iting to-day with the faculty of making a revolution in 
 fiction far more realistic than the one I myself experienced 
 seemed to me. 
 
 ' Of the actual fighting I can only write briefly. I 
 saw vety little of it. Somewhere about two in the after- 
 noon shrapnel began to play on the drawing-room barri- 
 cades, followed by a shower of buUets from some un- 
 ascertainable quarter. The defenders, taking to the 
 houses, gave battle from the windows and roofs. Puff, 
 puff, puff ! soon there was an opaque grey cloud over 
 Cabra Bridge. Outflanking the position from Glasnevin, 
 the militaty effected a surprise entty by the gardens and 
 backyards — ^first fall for the Dubhn Fusiliers. With 
 that rebuff the position on the Park Road became un- 
 tenable, and such of the defenders as were not captured 
 withdrew citywards, leaving the northern entty open. 
 Through that gate huge covered motors, like Boer 
 wagons on trek, tore down the North Circular and 
 Berkeley roads at nightfall, filled with soldiers, their 
 bayonets glinting in the gloom. Short as was the fight, 
 it had tragedy to spare. - The fatuous spectators, linger- 
 ing too long and heedless of the rain, ran amok when the 
 fusillade opened. Not all of them escaped. Knots of 
 hysterical people helped, with linked arms, some limp 
 victim to hospital, face and clothes running blood. A 
 priest, materialising from nowhere, hastened with the 
 viaticumiioumdying girl to a man with his brains splashed 
 over his trousers. Two boys with head-wounds, and dark 
 clotted hair lay dead. An old man was shot — blind. 
 
REBELLION AS SEEN BY JOHN HIGGINS 231 
 
 ' On Wednesday morning we had two surprising items 
 of news — ^that Sir Roger Casement had been sent to the 
 Tower — ^homely chmax to his strange adventure by land 
 and sea, to be run down by a peasant's daughter in 
 Kerry — and that Sheehy Skeffington had been shot in 
 Portobello Barracks. Poor Skeffington, the alert, good- 
 humoured-looking little man, with his air of perpetually 
 savouring a joke and hurrying to a mass meeting with 
 some brilliant amendment up his sleeve — ^we were very 
 sorry for him. 
 
 'That evening I witnessed a delightful conflict be- 
 tween a Volunteer sniper and some soldiers. The former 
 was either too humane for his work or too uncertain ; 
 the latter appeared too unnerved and amateurish. The 
 exchanges took place across a green railed-in lawn, the 
 combatants taking cover and behaving in the accepted 
 fashion. War on these terms might become the most 
 fascinating game possible, leaving the most pacific 
 conscience without an objection. An almighty racket, 
 plenty of movement, thrills galore, no casualties, and 
 honour — I hope — satisfied. No one saw the sniper 
 except the writer, and on fours the sniper could not have 
 sniped the megatherium. 
 
 ' About midnight a thin shaft of fight showed white 
 through the closed shutters of my room. KneeHng at 
 the window I watched the quivering glare of a search- 
 fight passing the roofs and chimneys in review. There 
 was a venomous volley in unison — ^yet not quite so — 
 and when I knelt down, wondering which buUet had got 
 home first, thinking of the murderous hide-and-seek of 
 those strange lonely vigils on the housetops of our 
 afflicted city, thinking, too, that out there those abrupt 
 dramas were being played. Irishman against Irishman 
 on the holy soil of our country — ^I could only pray 
 simply — God save Ireland. But God sees the con- 
 fusions and implications of our worship. 
 
 ' The world knows how the foUowing two days passed, 
 position after position faUing to the military, guns 
 smashing desolation and horror by night and day into 
 
232 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 the burning heart of Dublin, troops closing in nearer, 
 nearer. And on Saturday, with infinite reUef and some 
 incredulity, came the tidings of surrender, of another 
 dream laid, of the end of good, impractical men's hearts' 
 desire, the end of that Irish Republic that struck, in 
 full confidence of victory, fifteen hundred against the 
 greatest empire the world has known, in fair fight, struck 
 and failed, but kjndled for the generous imaginations of 
 mankind a touch of romance that darkened a whole 
 continent of armies. It is over now with its stresses 
 and piteousnesses, its hopes, its prides, and devotions — 
 over for ever, except its enduring memory. Against 
 every array of contumely I wiU still maintain that in its 
 spirit and unselfishness this was something almost 
 religious — ^in despite of which sedentary madmen in the 
 coming days vsdil write superficial devilment (as many 
 of them are doing now) for the children of Ireland yet 
 unborn and Ireland's woe. Time is a healer and novelty 
 a philtre to close the eyehds of retrospect ; but can one 
 ever enter the new building, to buy stamps across a 
 brand-new counter from a brand-new clerk, thoroughly 
 disinfected of all dangerous sentiments, without think- 
 ing of the old building at the close of the red week, 
 when the fabric of dream-stuff was shot and riven and 
 the last gallant rally was made to the bleeding heart of 
 an enterprise — ^the spirit heart of the Irish Republic ! ' 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 BROOKHILL 
 
 For the first time one left Dublin behind with a sense 
 of relief. The most terrible of all spectres, Fear, 
 haunted the old town in those summer days. We got 
 back to a fearless country. The stations through which 
 we passed were indeed crowded with R.I.C. men, but 
 the country boys on the platform wore the Republican 
 colours, with as much insouciance as the small Dublin 
 urchins, who were yet so quick to salute an officer 
 because soldiering is in their blood. The hired motor- 
 car which took us from the station was driven by a youth 
 wearing the yellow, white, and green. By the way, I 
 have been told that the colours signify the union of 
 orange and green with the colourless white for the link 
 between. Dublin had been bitter and revengeful, or 
 it had been gay and forlorn, according to its way of 
 looking at the thing : it had been macabre. One had 
 seen and heard so many ghastly things. For once the 
 West gave one reassurance. 
 
 We were soon in the midst of another move. The 
 Congested Districts Board had bowed us out of Carra- 
 doyne, having taken over the estate. About the time — 
 I believe it was the very day the Board showed, through 
 its solicitor, an intention to ' turn nasty ' — a. married 
 Lambert had written to me : ' Do find us a tenant for 
 Brookhill.' Brookhill is the dearest spot on earth to 
 the Lamberts. It seemed providential coming on the 
 very heels of the solicitor's letter, which had a gouty 
 sound of irascibility. The writer might have had fierce 
 twinges as he wrote. BrookhiU was vacant, and an 
 inspection of it showed that it was a very desirable 
 
234 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 habitation : so after a few preliminary arrangements, we 
 moved in, in such weather as Mr. Lambert described in 
 his weather record ' with an almost Syrian wind.' We 
 had some weeks of blazing weather without a drop of 
 rain. The worst of fine weather in Mayo is that after 
 a few weeks of it your water supply gives out, which is 
 ridiculous, considering how much rain there is. Also 
 the true Westesn begins to pine for the rain. 
 
 Brookhill is a house which has temperament and 
 atmosphere, quite a lovable house. Being very dearly 
 loved by its owners it has the air of being loved. It is 
 gentle and comfortable and well-pleased. 
 
 We were told at our first coming that it was haunted. 
 I have never seen nor felt any ghosts. It is a house of 
 long, low-ceiled corridors, and quaint turns and twists. 
 In the middle of the house, on the upper floor, there is a 
 high central haU with a groined roof, capable, by closing 
 doors on the intersecting corridors, of being made into 
 a room. There is an oriel window buUt out over the 
 hall-door, and above it a little lancet window with 
 coloured lights. Above the window, but only visible 
 from outside, are a couple of loopholes admitting to the 
 space between the ceiling and the roof. 
 
 At Carradoyne we had had a pack of impudent 
 starlings under the eaves that mimicked every sound they 
 heard. Their bicycle bell had points before you heard 
 them miaowing like the cats or barking like the dogs or 
 cackling hke the hens or whirring away Hke the lawn- 
 mower. Many a time those rascals deceived me. But 
 Brooklull had a roof-fuU of bees. The space behind 
 these loopholes by which they came and went, was 
 reported to be filled in with solid comb. In very hot 
 weather the honey used to run down the walls. I never 
 knew bees so irascible. Any noise, such as a motor, or 
 even a lawn-mower, would bring them out in a vengeful 
 crowd. Sometimes there was evidence of a battle of the 
 bees in doorsteps strewn with the dying and the dead. 
 We had to veil our front bedroom windows with mosquito 
 netting lest the bees should attack our innocent guests 
 
BROOKHILL 235 
 
 in sleep, but, after the bitter early months of 191 7, they 
 troubled us no more. The little oriel window used to 
 be full of dead bees, and, once on a time, the floor was 
 strewn with numbers of "dead butterflies. We never 
 knew from whence either came. We have made the 
 little window into a shrine of Our Lady, with a lamp at 
 her feet that sends out a ray of Ught visible a long way 
 off. She keeps watch over the absent boys and remembers, 
 perhaps, the boys of the house who have fallen in the war. 
 So the window has been kept closed, and yet the bees 
 and the butterflies came in. 
 
 Standing at the stair-head the corridor, narrow and 
 low, stretches out so long that we call the rooms at the 
 far end Darkest Africa, in allusion to their remoteness, 
 not their darkness. Unexpected corridors ending in 
 little rooms branch off at right angles to the main 
 corridor. It is a house for children's games, for hide- 
 and-seek, with its many rooms, its communicating 
 doorways and double stairs, its easy egress by lower 
 windows. 
 
 If you stand out on the tennis lawn and call to any 
 one your words come back to you from the house, as 
 fairily fine and deliberate as the mockery of the starlings. 
 You might believe that the little ghosts of the vanished 
 children were mimicking delicately. 
 
 It must have been an enchanting place for the children. 
 In front of the house lies a little lake which is said to 
 afford the best wild-duck shooting in Connaught. Wild 
 birds of all kinds frequent the lake and its backwaters. 
 There is always the rattle of the moorhens, and in the 
 grey of the morning if you lie awake you hear the rush 
 and the quacking of the wild duck as they come in. 
 Sixty brace of duck will fall to a few guns of a morning, 
 with tern and moor-fowl and other small game thrown in. 
 
 The backwaters are enchanting. In early summer 
 you walk between walls of rhododendron overhanging the 
 water. You go along a little spit of land till you come 
 to an intersecting waterway, which you cross hy a crazy 
 plank or jump if you are agile. When the duck and the 
 
236 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 moorhens have hatched out their broods you come on 
 the Uttle adorable creatures swimming about in quiet 
 pools ; and you may wander along all sorts of pretty 
 ways till you emerge on the wide bog fuU of pale reeds 
 and rushes and steeped in a great quietness. 
 
 I have always held that generations of Brookhill 
 children, with the unending industry of children when 
 they love what •they are doing, must have planted the 
 primroses in such immense and unprecedented profusion. 
 There are many daffodils in their season, both single 
 and double, standing up against the background of 
 velvety moss. But the primroses ! There is a big 
 mound, Druidic perhaps, in which is a vault wherein an 
 old Lambert chose to be buried. He could hardly have 
 chosen a sweeter spot, but one rather grudges that grim 
 reminder of our mortality its place amid all the sweet- 
 nesses. Above the vault the feathery trees wave, and 
 close by, the lake, gathered between banks, tumbles over 
 a little weir, like masses of green hair, before travelling 
 across a field or two to join the River Robe. 
 
 In spring you will hardly see a blade of grass on the 
 Mount for primroses. It is a sea of primroses. The 
 Mount is a sight then. There are sheets of primroses 
 elsewhere, everywhere, Hke flights of white butterflies 
 resting, wings spread, on the moss, while their moment 
 lasts. But the Mount has so many primroses that they 
 overflow and run out like little tongues into the level 
 grass — even crossing the carriage drive as though a tide 
 subsiding had left its foam behind. 
 
 The old Lambert who is buried in the Mount gives 
 Brookhill its ghostly reputation to a people who delight 
 in ghosts. Horses sometimes shy at the tumbling of the 
 waters over the weir Therefore it is said that the horses 
 see old Lambert's ghost and will not pass it. There is 
 supposed to be a ghost in the long avenue. I don't 
 believe it. I should know old Lambert's ghost if I saw 
 it, for his picture hangs in the panelled dining-room. 
 The people who say that the Mount is haunted take 
 such pleasure in the ghost that the vault had to be 
 
BROOKHILL 237 
 
 closed against courting couples. There is such a thing 
 as a delightful fear. 
 
 When Susan Mitchell stayed with us soon after our 
 getting in — ^we were all jumpy just then — she said that 
 an evil emanation came in at her window from the wood. 
 Lily Yeats told me last summer that she had heard fairy 
 music in the same wood. I, having moved into that 
 room since, hear nothing but the wood pigeons, and see 
 nothing but the dawn and the moonlight in the windows. 
 When the wind is north east it does indeed emulate in 
 my little work-room the south-east wind that played on 
 the ventilator at Carradoyne. I know it is the wind, 
 but if any one was out for seeing or hearing ghosts they 
 could not pass that by. 
 
 To be sure the house has odd acoustic properties. 
 When we came first the servants, sleeping downstairs, 
 were scared by footsteps overhead and voices. Others 
 heard them as well. There is a loose-fitting door which is 
 shaken at intervals as though some one asked admittance. 
 It was some time before these fears were laid at rest. 
 I found out about them last autumn when the children 
 were all gone away, and we were again as we had been 
 before they came — ^with a difference. One did not like 
 to pass the doors of their rooms that stood open showing 
 a cold neatness instead of the happy disorder. The 
 emptiness of the big wandering house could be felt. 
 
 At this time I changed my room from Darkest Africa, 
 where I had been well content while the children stayed. 
 It was less lonely at the head of the staircase, and the 
 new room has a warm aspect and a cheerful chintz 
 paper and hangings. But when I went up there in the 
 afternoons and the dusk was closing in, I used to leave 
 the door open for company. I would speak to some 
 one coming up the stairs or passing the door, and would 
 receive no answer. After a time I discovered that 
 sounds on the lower floor seemed as though on the upper. 
 Once I was standing in the narrow corridor off the hall 
 downstairs when I heard a light, quick foot cross the 
 hall, not ten paces from me. I went to see who it was : 
 
238 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 there was no one. I came to the conclusion? that it was 
 the maid going to planish the little lamp in the window 
 upstairs, so that the boy on the Macedonian Front should 
 have Ught through the hours of darkness. 
 
 If the house has any ghosts they are very gentle. I 
 have never met with any though I have gone up and 
 down those corridors in the winter dusk, and have come 
 downstairs aftej every one is abed for something left 
 behind. I still do not altogether like the open dressing- 
 room door if I am in my room in the dusk ; but that is 
 only a whimsy. 
 
 I shotitd not like to meet the ghost of the Lambert 
 who is buried in the Mount, nor the ghost of the Glen- 
 dinning who formed the BrookhiU library, whose por- 
 trait, ' like that of a male witch,' says a present-day 
 Lambert, hangs over a door in the dining-room. This 
 was the Glendinning who was the first Scotsman to be 
 appointed to a Chair at Cambridge. When Boswell 
 brought the news to Dr. Johnson the latter said severely : 
 ' Boswell, it is aU very well to be facetious : you should 
 not be indecent.' Perhaps he had seen the learned 
 Glendinning. 
 
 The Uttle library he formed crowds the brown book- 
 shelves of one of the very old rooms at Brookhill, those 
 rooms of the oriels and the deep windows which must 
 have been the nucleus of the house. It is an extremely 
 pleasant room, with red walls and hangings that make a 
 good background for the books. I have so many books 
 of my own that I have only just begun to discover the 
 Ubrary books, about which I have such a sense of 
 responsibility that I do my reading standing or sitting 
 opposite the vacant place in the bookshelf, restoring the 
 volume to its place before I leave the room. It is a good 
 small library, very much eighteenth century and earUer — 
 the noveUsts, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne : many memoir- 
 ists, histories : volumes of poems : curiously illus- 
 trated books. Perhaps I might have dipped earlier if 
 some one had not said, quite wrongly, that it was a poor 
 collection. He was not fitted to judge, but I thought 
 
BROOKHILL 239 
 
 he spoke for those who were. Miss Edgeworth is quite 
 modern in that library. I find some of my excursions 
 into the books very delightful, even apart from the books 
 themselves. One day I took down a very unpromising 
 book, McNeill on the Second Advent. In it I found the 
 following inscription : 
 
 ' To Superintendent or Inspector of C Division for the use 
 of the men under him (as also for the Prisoners who may from 
 time to time be confined in the Sackville Lane Station House) 
 this book is given for Mr. Durham's civiHty and kindness to 
 Mr. Hassard while he was confined there for one hour for telling a 
 Mr. Edward Magowan an attorney of Co. Cavan, No. 6 Berkley 
 Street, Dublin, that he was a Robber, Liar, and Thief, a Swindler 
 and Forger — which is the Truth. 
 
 (Signed) R. M. Hassard. 
 
 87 Lr. Dorset Street, Dublin.' 
 
 A further inscription on a second fly-leaf runs : 
 
 ' If this book is read with attention, anxiety, and a desire for 
 Knowledge, it may turn out for those who wish for to know the 
 Truth the greatest blessing that ever fell on them. 
 
 Richard, Major Hassard. 
 
 'i^th July 1850.' 
 
 There is no indication that the book was ever read. 
 
 The library window, which opens as a door, leads out 
 on to a flight of steps overlooking the tennis-lawn, under 
 the oriel of the room above which corresponds to the 
 oriel over the front door. There we sat during the very 
 hot weather of the month after our getting in, evening 
 after evening, with chairs at the head of the steps and 
 cushions on the steps. Susan Mitchell was our first 
 visitor in the new house. It was the week Sir Roger 
 Casement was hanged at Pentonville, when a London 
 crowd cheered in the street, while, at the back of the jail, 
 a group of his countrymen and women knelt in the dust 
 of the road and prayed for the passing soul. All that 
 summer was darkened by death. 
 
 Susan used to sing for us in the inspired way she has, 
 without music, swaying about to the passion or pity of 
 
240 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 her song, her beautiful head misty in the twilight. It 
 is a golden voice. A. E. said : ' Susan's voice is like 
 cream.' She is as passionate as a nightingale, and she 
 makes the platform singer cold and formal when one 
 remembers her. 
 
 She sang many songs, but the one that remains, that 
 win always bring the month and the year, was ' The 
 Croppy Boy,' th^ old song of the other RebeUion — 1798. 
 ' There was death in it,' one of us said. It was always 
 wailing about the house. No wonder one became jumpy. 
 
 After Carradoyne, BrooMuU, where one could hear the 
 shunting of the trains and their whisthng, was quite 
 urbane : and the friendly old people who were depend- 
 ents of the Lamberts and yet remembered them with 
 devotion were quite delighted to see us take possession 
 of the house. I put up pictures and books and china, 
 as though we had come to stay permanently. Those 
 are things I delegate to no one, and I am told that while 
 I am doing them I am unapproachable. When they are 
 done, and I can look round at the work of my hands with 
 pardonable pride, I usually retire to bed for a few days. 
 We have had five major movings in ten years, and that 
 was the worst, since we had no vans and but one packer, 
 so had to do it aU ourselves. 
 
 By the way, one of the old dependents of the Lamberts 
 used to say : ' Many 's the time Miss Violet Martin 
 came to BrookhiU,' and would display a photograph 
 ' Martin Ross ' had given her. In my little workroom 
 at BrookhiU there is a picture of Martin Ross — such a 
 sad one, made during her last Olness by the most loving 
 of hands. 
 
 People always teU me they like my workroom, in what- 
 ever house it may be. That at BrookhiU is entered by 
 two steps upward. It is a long, narrow room, and it 
 has four little windows in the immensely deep walls, 
 two looking north, one east,- one south. Lily Yeats 
 said to me last summer : ' When we were children in 
 SHgo, we had a nursery very like this room, with windows 
 either side. One side had a beautiful prospect of woods 
 
BROOKHILL 241 
 
 and fields. The other side overlooked a stable-yard 
 where there was always plenty going on. The future 
 poet, and the future artist, and we, designers and 
 embroiderers, used to hang entranced over the view of 
 ' the stable-yard. We never looked at the beautiful pros- 
 pect at all.' 
 
 My windows command the Mount, the beautifully 
 wooded slope upwards from the lake, and a distant 
 prospect of a range of greenhouses. The paper of the 
 room did not commend itself to me, so I covered it as 
 thickly as possible with pictures. There are A. E.'s 
 young pictures, before ever he was A. E. There is 
 a boy's head in chalk by W. B. Yeats, a rehc of his 
 art-student days. There is my father's portrait by 
 J. B. Yeats, and a delightful little portrait of our Dublin 
 Fusilier boy, at the age of six, by Dudley Hardy. There 
 are some drawings in chalk and pencil by Dudley Hardy 
 — 2i couple of illustrations to a story of mine by Edmund 
 Sullivan, and aU manner of small things, photographs, 
 coloured prints, many Wyndhamiana ; many pictures of 
 Lord and Lady Aberdeen, a large photograph of Lord 
 Grey, and various other things dear to me. On the 
 chimneypiece stands an old Crucifix which belonged to 
 Lionel Johnson. The one waU which is without windows 
 is entirely covered with books. For the rest, there is a 
 long table, a. real work-table ; and everywhere there is a 
 confusion of papers and letter-baskets which is really 
 quite orderly. When there is a good turf and wood fire 
 in it it is charming. But one of these days I shall be 
 puUing up my tent pegs and going. What do two greying 
 people want with such a house, and their children 
 scattered and gone from them ? 
 
•CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD 
 
 There was a delicious day when Susan was with us that 
 we motored to Louisburgh by the Atlantic. It was a 
 sleepily warm day when one was peacefully drowsy, even 
 motoring, and inclined to sing a little as children sing 
 themselves asleep — a. day on which one quite forgot to be 
 jumpy, or to remember the Rebellion, except as an old, 
 far-off, unhappy thing. 
 
 It was a grey morning. There are two mountains that 
 dominate the plains of Mayo with many smaller ranges, 
 Croagh Patrick and Nephin. In any kind of clear 
 weather they are visible. Occasionally they are a field 
 or two away, to all seeming ; they are actually some forty 
 miles ; when they come to you like that you may expect 
 polthogues of rain, or teems of rain as we used to say 
 in my youth. 
 
 The morning was misty. As a rule you get a very 
 good view of Croagh Patrick with Nephin away on the 
 right as you approach Castlebar, which is about seventeen 
 miles from us, but we got to Castlebar and on towards 
 Westport, and tumbled down into Westport by the 
 infamous hill by which the townspeople must travel every 
 day, and climbed up out of it again, and not a gUmpse 
 of the Reek, as the country people call Croagh Patrick — 
 but before us a hazy sky with no suggestion at all of a 
 mountain. 
 
 From Westport to Louisburgh you run between the 
 Reek and Clew Bay, and there is about as much of 
 beauty when you can see it as any creature this side of 
 Heaven has any right to expect. But that morning 
 
PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD 243 
 
 there was neither Reek nor Bay. We explained, half- 
 shamefacedly, as though we did not expect to be be- 
 lieved, that the wall of mist one side of us contained the 
 Reek and the wall of mist the other side the Bay with its 
 365 islands. Susan did not say anything, but I am sure 
 she had her doubts. Anyhow there was plenty to interest 
 her, for there was a horse-fair in Louisburgh, and long 
 before the town was reached the motor had to run 
 through strings of horses, very often young ones, and 
 led as often as not by a wild-headed little boy, or a small 
 girl in a cotton frock. As one gets further West the 
 dress of the women changes, very much for the better. 
 The country is all the more beautiful for the pink and 
 blue cotton, or the red Galway flannel of the women's 
 skirts, and the white snood on the luxuriant hair that 
 takes the place of the cheap fashions of the more 
 sophisticated parts of the country. 
 
 The young horses, I may say, were everywhere, except 
 on the road. They were on the stone walls that go 
 down before a kick, or on the grassy banks, or in the 
 next field, or across the bonnet of the motor, always 
 with an intrepid child clinging to their heads ; but though 
 it seemed impossible not to have an accident, yet nothing 
 untoward happened. 
 
 We had given up the Reek for that day, and Clew Bay 
 for anything but a duU leaden mirror, when, suddenly, 
 very high up, a winding pathway came into view ; nothing 
 but that, suspended in mid-air. Then the mist at our 
 right hand became pearl and gold and opal, and out of 
 it began to come the islands. Presently the very top 
 of the Reek showed, massed in the clouds, and the mists 
 rolled away and there came the golden splendour with the 
 great purple waU of the Reek rising above us, on the other 
 side the golden water, slightly heaving, with all its islets. 
 
 At Louisburgh the mist had come again, but it was 
 golden summer mist which ^e might not have recognised 
 for mist at all if it was not that, sitting under the apple- 
 trees in the rectory garden, within sight and sound of the 
 bees making their honey, the kind rector who had given 
 
244 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 us lunch, lamented that the day was not doing its best 
 for us, since the sea was hidden. 
 
 As we came home that evening, having stopped at 
 Westport for tea, the motor broke down four Irish miles 
 from anywhere. It was an exquisite evening with a 
 young moon in a faintly rosy sky, and the air fuU of the 
 whirring of reapers, for the people were everywhere 
 saving dieir crops. We had time to be glad that we had 
 made such a very good tea, for, though we sent out S.O.S. 
 calls by every cychst and motorist who passed, we were 
 full three hours on the road. We had time to consider 
 what would happen if aU the calls were answered at 
 once, and to congratulate ourselves that the broken 
 axle had not happened going down that wicked lull at 
 Westport — ^the chauffeur had remarked that he had felt 
 her going all day — ^before help came. Then it took the 
 shape of a car the proprietor of which had already been 
 fined by the R. M. for a motoring offence. He happened 
 to be driving — ^the same car that had taken fourteen to 
 Galway Races, sitting up, lying down, on top of each 
 other ; and he had a pretty fuU complement ; there 
 were a couple supporting the spare wheel — ^but he called 
 back to us cheerfully that he would return for us as soon 
 as he had got rid of his party. We wondered if it was 
 mockery or magnanimity. It proved to be the latter, for 
 he came back, and off we went just at the moment the 
 first rescuing car arrived. They all arrived in time 
 and converged on to the lonely chauffeur sitting looking 
 at the wreck of the car. We left him to settle with them. 
 
 But our driver took fuU advantage of the situation. 
 Never have I been driven at such a pace, except once in 
 the early days of motoring, while it was stiU an experience, 
 and Sir Horace Plunkett drove me from the Department 
 Offices in Merrion Street to the house where I was stay- 
 ing in the County Dublin. Those were the days when 
 Sir Horace, with other highly placed gentlemen, was 
 fined for exceeding the speed limit in England. He had 
 to return for a meeting of the Council with very Httle 
 time to do it in, and, on that drive, I quite shared the 
 
PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD 245 
 
 delusion of the gentleman unused to fast motoring who 
 said : ' What a long churchyard you have here ! ' when 
 it was only the milestones. I landed Sir Horace dis- 
 gracefully in a cul de sac, after I had assured him that 
 I could have found my way blindfold, having lost aU 
 sense of locality. Now and then I had a bewildering 
 apparition — ^Uke Croagh Patrick appearing in the mist 
 — of a Dublin Metropolitan policeman giving the salute. 
 
 But aU that was long, long ago, and motoring is no 
 longer the one thing to be desired, or one of the things 
 most to be desired. 
 
 As for that rush home in the August evening of 1916, 
 now and again I heard the R.M. say : ' Go quietly, 
 
 P .' ' It 's aU right, sir,' P would answer, with 
 
 an oily chuckle. The car rocked from side to side. We 
 narrowly missed several sheep. We knocked feathers 
 out of a gander who was demonstrating to his wives 
 that it was quite safe to cross the road in front of a 
 motor so long as you didn't get flurried. His high- 
 pitched denunciation of us as road-hogs followed us. 
 Not one of the fast mongrels for whom the most humane 
 of motorists carry a lapful of stones, since it is the 
 only argument against suicide that they understand, had 
 a chance to get up with us or intercept us. The R.M. 
 was silent. He had answered our despairing cry for 
 moderation by a laconic : ' He has no lights ' : and the 
 oily chuckle followed from the driver. 
 
 One had time to remember. The R.M. had given 
 instructions that the police were to look out for vehicles 
 without lights and motors exceeding the speed-limit ; 
 and an over-zealous (in any circumstances) District In- 
 spector had promised to send out police patrols to catch 
 offenders. One could conjecture the despairing resigna- 
 tion from the R.M.'s squarely set shoulders. It was 
 
 between Scylla and Charybdis, and Mr. P had his 
 
 fuU revenge. 
 
 At the very last lap, going into the town, we flashed 
 before the scandalised eyes of the D.I. and one of his 
 patrols ; and were gone before he could cry halt. As 
 
246 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 we pulled up at our own hall door P remarked with 
 
 the chuckle, ' That was a near thing ! If the tail light 
 had been on they 'd have seen the number ! ' 
 
 ' Look here, P ,' said the justly indignant R.M., 
 
 ' if you are ever brought up before me for not having 
 lights or for exceeding the speed-limit, I 'U give you the 
 heaviest fine within my power.' 
 
 ' I told you,'* said P , ' when I nearly took the 
 
 fleece off tiiat sheep that I 'd never hit anything nor 
 had an accident yet.' 
 
 Another of those days we went to Aclull Sound where 
 the R.M. occasionally sits, and that is even a more 
 beautiful run than to Louisburgh by the Reek ; because 
 for all the thirty miles or more you are approaching the 
 mountains — ^Nephin and Nephin Beg and the Curraun 
 Range — and they are opening out before you in their 
 wUd, soft majesty, with the little streams running down 
 their sides and they in purple like a king of a summer's 
 day. When you have passed through the gap of that 
 first range you may come upon a sea literally as blue as 
 sapphire. 
 
 At Achill Sound, now bridged across, I always remem- 
 ber a story A. E. told me long ago of the bridging of the 
 Sound — or was it Achill ? Mr. Balfour, the then Chief 
 Secretary, and Lord Cadogan, the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 were visiting those parts and were hospitably enter- 
 tained by the parish priest. They had a very good 
 dinner, and afterwards they listened sympathetically to 
 the prayer of the parish priest that a bridge -should be 
 buUt over the Sound. Not so long before a boat-load 
 of boys and girls had been swamped by a wave there, 
 and every creature, some thirty in all, had been drowned, 
 thus fulfilling a prophecy that a train should run be- 
 tween Westport and Achill and the first passengers it 
 would carry would be a trainful of dead. ' We must 
 see what we can do, Arthur,' said the Lord-Lieutenant : 
 and Mr. Balfour repUed ' Yes, indeed, it seems a case 
 for something to be done.' 
 
 The next morning the distinguished visitors awoke to 
 
PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD 247 
 
 the strains of a band. Rising up and looking from their 
 windows they beheld a crowd of people outside the 
 house. . The band played all through their dressing and 
 while they breakfasted, and they had only to glance out 
 to see that the eyes of the crowd were all looking one 
 way. 
 
 ' Yet they say the Irish are unfriendly,' said one to the 
 other as they met on the stairs. 
 
 ' This is certainly a popular reception,' said the 
 other. 
 
 Their host enlightened them. 
 
 ' It is that the people are expressing their gratitude 
 for what you 've done for them.' 
 
 ' For what we 've done for them ? ' 
 
 ' The little bit of a bridge ye promised me last night. 
 It 's gone all over the island and they don't know what 
 to do, they 're so delighted.' 
 
 ' We couldn't very well go back on it,' said one states- 
 man to another when they were alone. 
 
 I believe A. E. told me another story on that same 
 occasion, for the two stories go together in my mind. 
 It could not concern AchiU, of which thp Irish Church 
 Missions made their own with such thoroughness that 
 neither a Catholic church nor a Catholic school was 
 permitted on the island. 
 
 It concerned one of those friendships between priest 
 and parson which have happened sometimes in places 
 where each had to depend on the other for society. One 
 night there was a violent storm and the rector could not 
 get home, so was grateful for the offer of half the parish 
 priest's bed. Before retiring each knelt down to say his 
 prayers at their respective sides of the bed. They had 
 sat up late talking and both were very sleepy. The 
 parish priest said his prayers, yawned, and looked across 
 at his guest, whose face was still hidden in his folded 
 arms. ' I can't be beaten by a Protestant,' said he, and 
 started off praying again. Again he looked across and 
 marvelled at the piety of the rector, stiU absorbed in 
 prayer. 
 
248 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 This happened several times. At long last the Rector 
 lifted his head and looked about him. ' I believe I 
 dropped asleep,' said he. 
 
 ' Musha, the mischief bother ye ! ' said the priest. 
 ' Here I am out o' my bed at two o'clock in the morning, 
 and aU for you to have your beauty sleep ! ' 
 
 In the country around AchUl you see the beautiful 
 girls digging in tjie fields ; the men go ofi to Scotland 
 for the harvesting and bring jjack enough money to live 
 on when winter prevents their harvest of the sea and the 
 land. Those girls add to the beauty of the landscape. 
 Sometimes you see a red-haired girl and the pink and 
 white of her complexion will be like apple-blossom : but 
 often they are brown-haired and blue-eyed, with a 
 splendid free carriage and beautiful figures. 
 
 Looking over the waste spaces one recalled George 
 Maguire's story of the Woman of the War. 
 
 ' Long ago, some time in the eighteenth century, 
 there was an old fellow named Carabine, and he had the 
 gift of prophecy. When he was dying he made two 
 prophecies : one was that from his family should spring 
 a great archbishop, and that came true. But we 're 
 not concerned about the archbishop. The second 
 prophecy was that in so many generations from himself — 
 seven it was, I think — ^there should come a woman 
 named Catherine Rowlands and she should Uve to see 
 the greatest war the world ever knew, and she should 
 be killed in the war, and her death would be the end of 
 the war. 
 
 ' She wiU marry a man named CaUaghan,' he said ; 
 ' and she wiU have two sons and two daughters. She 
 wUl be working her little farm, and she wearing a bracket 
 (i.e. a check or plaid) dress when she wiU look up and see 
 the lights over Achill and the men coming. Then she 
 will run to warn the neighbours, and the men wiU over- 
 take her at the Rock of the Horse, and they wiU kiU 
 her, and that wiU be the end of the greatest war the 
 world has ever known.' 
 
 The prophecy was forgotten, except by a few inter- 
 
PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD 249 
 
 ested in such queer matters, till about forty years ago, 
 when a doctor in BaUycroy was wanting a servant. A 
 fine, fresh-looking, young country girl came to him looking 
 for the place. 
 
 ' What is your name ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Catherine Rowlands.' 
 
 * And where do you come from ? ' 
 
 ' From the Dale Mountains in Tyrawley.' 
 
 ' Then you 'U be Carabine's little girl,' he said — for 
 that too was in the prophecy, and he knew all those old 
 stories by heart. 
 
 She only laughed when he told her the tale ; and it did 
 not keep her from marrying a man named Callaghan who 
 was in the same employment : and in time she had two 
 sons and iKvo daughters as the prophecy said. She had 
 always a great liking for a ' bracket ' dress, and she was 
 not put off that either by the prophecy. But, when the 
 great war broke out, and the people began to call her 
 the Woman of the War, she grew frightened. One day 
 she burnt her bracket dress, and without telling any one 
 she went off to her own people in the Dale Mountains in 
 Tyrawley. But after a time she wearied of being 
 separated from her husband and children, and she went 
 back to them, for she said : ' What will be wiU be ! ' 
 and she bought herself a new dress of the bracket she 
 always liked. 
 
 Georgd Maguire went to see her with a couple of 
 priests, and they had a toilsome journey, jumping over 
 bog-pools, and half-wading in the soft places, and going 
 through rushes and round boulders ; but at last they 
 found the woman herself in her little hillside farm, and 
 she digging potatoes, and one of the daughters with her. 
 She was still a fine fresh-looking woman of her age, and, 
 when she was asked for the story she told it, her foot on 
 the spade and her eyes looking out seaward the way the 
 lights and the men were to come. 
 
 ' And there,' she said, pointing to a great boulder, 
 ' is the Rock of the Horse, 'Tis the only way I could 
 take if I was runnin' to warn the neighbours ; for there 
 
250 . THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 is the mountain, and there is the sea ; and the only 
 way for me would be by the Rock of the Horse.' 
 
 ' But how do you know it is this war ? ' asked one of 
 the priests. ' You might live to see another.' 
 
 ' It is this war,' she replied, ' for the prophecy said 
 'twas running I 'd be when they 'd overtake and kill me. 
 I 'm sixty now, and if I was to live to see another war I 
 wouldn't be aljle to run.' 
 
 In one of those little farm cottages, in the country 
 lying back to the mountains, the famous criminal, 
 Lynchehawn, was discovered. He had given the police 
 a long chase, eluding them every time they got close up 
 to him. The man whose father arrested Lynchehawn „ 
 told me the story. 
 
 ' My father was walking on the bridge of Westport one 
 evening when a man passing close to him whispered in his 
 ear. My father never made a sign but passed on and 
 came back again, almost touching the man who had 
 given him the whisper. It was the dusk of the evening, 
 and as he passed, his hand hanging careless-like, a bit 
 of paper was put into it. He walked back to the barracks 
 and he got a light and he opened the paper. There was 
 a message in it, and it was made out of letters cut from 
 a newspaper, one by one, and it was to tell where 
 Lynchehawn was to be found. So my father and two 
 of the men went out that night ; and an awful business 
 it was getting over the boggy country ; they were some- 
 times up to their waists in water, for it was pitch dark, 
 and they kept falling into bog-holes and being pulled 
 out again so that they were a wet and weary party when 
 they arrived at last at the cabin where they were told they 
 would find Lynchehawn. They knocked a long time at 
 the door before they waked up the people ; and when 
 they succeeded there was only an old man and woman, 
 a trembling old couple, who protested there was nothing 
 in the place but themselves, and that they 'd run out of 
 it into a bog-hole if a terrible fellow like Lynchehawn 
 was to come next or nigh them. It looked like as if their 
 story was true, for not a trace there was of any one but 
 
PLAYBOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD 251 
 
 themselves, and my father began to think Lynchehawn 
 had slipped them again or that maybe the message was 
 a trap. He was just going when he turned back and 
 looked at a big dresser against the wall, with a lot of 
 delf on it. And, whatever came over him, he said : 
 ' We '11 have that dresser out.' So, despite the cries 
 and prayers of the old woman, they dragged the dresser 
 out from the waU, and behind it, in a hoUow that the 
 stones had been picked out of, was Lynchehawn ! ' 
 
 Lynchehawn, it may be remembered, escaped from 
 prison and got safely away to America. His career, and 
 his concealment by the people, whether out of fear or 
 love, made the genesis of Synge's ' Playboy.' 
 
 Here is another playboy. I take this cutting from a 
 local paper. It is a letter received by the Rural Council 
 and read at a meeting of that body : 
 
 ' Mr. Chairman and Gintlemin, — As wan that goes round 
 with the stone-braiker given A helpin hand an lookin on at how 
 yer min is workin, I feel it my Juty as no other wan would 
 spaik for thim that they are intitled to a rise of pay. They are 
 up at five in the mornin' gettin' up Steem an' they are not 
 Don until 9 at night. They are all Grace and oil : they cannot 
 clane thimselves like other min. I seen chimbley sweepers and 
 when they would wash the sut of thimselves they wud be 'all 
 rite, but these poor min can't get the grace of there hands or face or 
 close, the sute they may pay 2 or 3 pounds for it is not worth 
 4 pince in wan monnth. They are hallin and pulhn at wire 
 ropes until there hands is blisthered. Patrick is Uke a hen on 
 a hot greddle and when he gets on to the Good road, John takes 
 his red flag and walks the road afore him. I want yous to give 
 a rise of pay to the ingineers and helpers and the Breckers and 
 rolers, let the ingins be little or big 2 pounds to the ingineers 
 and 30 bob to the Helpers. They are worth every pinny of it 
 and more. I hope, Gintlemin, yous 'U see your way to give 
 that little Rise and your ingins will work better. 
 
 A Raitpayer.' 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 FRIENDS 
 
 As soon as we had finished settling in at Brookhill, 
 Pamela and I went off for a brief visit to Evelyn, Lady 
 de Vesci, at Abbey Leix, Queen's Co. The immediate 
 cause of the visit was that Lady Wemyss, Mr. George 
 Wyndham's eldest sister and Lady de Vesci's sister-in- 
 law, was staying there with her daughters. I had had 
 a great deal of correspondence with Lady Wemyss since 
 her youngest son had fallen at Loos, and now his brother, 
 Lord Elcho, had followed him, having been killed at 
 Katia in the Sinai Desert, on Easter Sunday. In my 
 case the correspondence resulted in an article in the 
 Cornhill Magazine on those two noble brothers, who 
 will, I hope, have a fuller and more fitting commemoration 
 than could be given within the narrow limits of a magazine 
 article. 
 
 Lord Elcho had belonged to the brilliant group of 
 young men which included Juhan and BiUy GrenfeU, 
 John Manners, Charles Lister, Raymond Asquith, 
 Patrick Shaw Stewart, vsdth others such as Lord Lucas 
 and Maurice Baring, equally brilliant and individual, if 
 not quite on the same level of age. All, except Maurice 
 Baring, have fallen in battle, and not at any time, I 
 beUeve, nor in any country, has there been a group of 
 young men of finer capacity than theirs. To each in 
 his turn one might have said, 
 
 Be content ! 
 No honour of age had been more excellent. 
 
 From what I was told with a view to my article, I 
 carried away an impression, in the case of the younger 
 
FRIENDS 253 
 
 brother, of one almost too heavily weighted with thought 
 for his youth. He was but nineteen when he fell. His 
 young face in the picture I have of him seems to me to 
 have a look of suffering — of predestination, yet I know 
 that he could be wildly merry at times. With Lord Elcho 
 feU the fifth of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's great-great- 
 grandsons to faU in the war. They were all beautiful, 
 gracious, and gifted, some to an extraordinary degree. 
 The letters of Lord Elcho and Ivo Charteris, the poems 
 and letters of Edward Wyndham Tennant, show that 
 they inherited the literary quality which is in Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald's beautiful letters and the romance 
 of his personaUty. They wrote as to the manner born. 
 I do not know if the younger generation shared the 
 passion for Ireland which Madeline Wyndham had 
 handed on to her children, beyond Percy Wyndham's 
 letters to myself which I quoted in The Middle Tears, 
 in which it is plain that he inherited. 
 
 ' Ireland means more to me than I could ever write 
 or tell you if we met.' 
 
 And of his father : ' He was full of Irish blood and he 
 loved Ireland like a real lover. It was no ordinary 
 affection, it was right deep down in him. He loved her 
 with a passion.' 
 
 I remember a Christmas when Lady Glenconner wrote 
 to me that her children were performing a play she had 
 written for them, The Patriot. Was the beautiful dark- 
 haired Edward Wyndham Tennant Lord Edward in the 
 play, I wonder ? 
 
 The letters I have seen of Ivo Charteris have no Irish 
 allusion. They were mainly concerned with the War ; 
 feverish at first with anxiety to be gone ; later, for the 
 few weeks he had to live, filled with a quiet contentment, 
 as of one who has attained his desire, and describing the 
 things he saw with a real dramatic sense and beauty of 
 wording. He was but emerging from his schoolboy 
 days : his brow was heavy with promise of what was to 
 come. Of Lord E],cho I have an impression as of one 
 peculiarly fitted to lead, yet standing aside with an 
 
254 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 austere reticence. He would seem to have learnt the 
 ascetic virtues of detachment, of selflessness, of self- 
 abnegation. Patrick Shaw Stewart, almost or quite the. 
 last of that band of friends, wrote to Lady Elcho after 
 her husband's death : ' I do not think he ever, in all his 
 life, wanted anything for himself, except you.' All his 
 friends dwelt upon li.at selfless quahty in him. If there 
 was any danger that he would not use Ids great gifts to 
 the best advantage it lay in that self-abnegation. His 
 mother has said that he was capable of fierceness when 
 his anger and indignation were aroused. He might take 
 the kingdom of Heaven, but it was possible that he 
 would not lay violent hands upon the kingdom of this 
 world to bear it away, lest there should be self-seeking 
 in it. 
 
 The letter he wrote to his mother when his brother 
 fell is one of the great letters of the War, which seems to 
 have given an impulse to Uterary expression in the form 
 of letter-writing. I suppose when people are thinking 
 of great things, and writing with stark simplicity, the 
 naked soul speaking, the expression is like to be great. 
 Over and over again in the letters of quite simple people, 
 plain soldiers teUing what they had seen, bereaved 
 persons only conscious of bereavement, I have come 
 upon great phrases and passages. 
 
 Here is the letter : 
 
 Alexandria, 
 Egypt, October 2$ti, 191;. 
 
 Darling Mum, — I have absolutely nothing to say. When 
 your own mother and brother are concerned it is futile to talk 
 about sympathy, and one consolation for me is that, if any 
 comfort is to be extracted, or if the best kind of thought is of 
 any use — ^which, of course, it is — ^your soul is big enough, large 
 enough for that purpose. The mere thought of your tackling 
 it strengthens me. That sounds selfish and detached, but I have 
 faith in you. I suppose the misery of people like Ettie breaks 
 the shock. A woman with sympathy loses many sons before her 
 own. If anything could dwarf one's own tragedy it is the agony 
 of millions of others. But it doesn't — ^it is the other way about — 
 one's sluggish imagination is stimulated and one merely realises 
 
FRIENDS 255 
 
 for the first time other people's miseries as well as one's own. 
 The only sound thing is to hope the best for one's country, and 
 to expect absolutely nothing for oneself in the future. To write 
 down every one one loves as dead — and then if any of us are left 
 we shall be surprised. To think of one's country's future and 
 one's own happy past. The first is capable of vast improvement, 
 as for the second, when all is said and done, we were a damned 
 good family. Qua family, as good as Clouds. I couldn't have 
 any more joy out of anything than I have from my family. I am 
 glad we had that bit with Ivo at Hunstanton. I wish I had seen 
 him as a Guardsman. What letters ! The first one (' thousand 
 singing legs ') perfect description and atmosphere ; the second 
 one full of jolly thought, and not the least self-conscious. Bless 
 him. I am so awfully sorry for papa who loved him. Tell him 
 how much I feel for him. He must write his sons off and con- 
 centrate upon his grandchildren which, thank God, exist. 
 
 I am sending this by Mary Herbert, who has been an angel. 
 I am glad Mary Charteris has got Tom to console her. We will 
 try and keep him here. We move to Cairo in a few days, and 
 after the move I go out to GaUipoli. I should rather have stayed 
 here on the chance of the Balkans as cavalry. GaUipoli is terribly 
 duU— ^but umherufen very safe now, except for sickness. We have 
 had very few men and no officers hit since August 2ist. But the 
 gloom and boredom and discomfort of life there seems the 
 limit. — Good-bye, Darling, I love you till all 's blue. EgO. 
 
 I like that ' damned good family.' It is so exactly 
 what Lord Edward would have written. Lord Elcho 
 was Ego to his family, from his own childish rendering 
 of his name, Hugo. Odd that this Ego should have 
 been so utterly divorced from the taint of egoism. 
 
 I had heard enough of Lady de Vesci to esteem the 
 privilege of being,her guest. When she stood on the rail- 
 way platform at Abbeyleix waiting for us she looked, in her 
 flowing black garments, like a queen — a queen of poetry 
 or a priestess. She had had A. E. for a guest once, and 
 he had warmly admired her. He came as an angel un- 
 awares, sent down by the I.A.O.S. — the Irish Agricul- 
 tural Organisation Society — ^to explain to the people of 
 those parts co-operative dairying, banking, and such 
 things. ' I soon felt,' she said, ' that they had sent me 
 
256 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 something very remarkable. Just imagine expecting an 
 ordinary lecturer and getting A. E. ! ' 
 
 Literature was held in honour at that house. It was 
 such a quiet, intimate visit as one appreciates deeply 
 when it is made to the elect, and these were, indeed, 
 elect ladies. Ireland was held in great love there ; and 
 in that summer of death it was good to enter into such 
 a calm, benignant atmosphere. Just then love of Ireland 
 seemed the one thing desirable : and Lady de Vesci 
 spoke of the country with the most exquisite tenderness. 
 ' This most tenderly loved country ' was her constant 
 phrase in speaking of it ; as to Lady Wemyss it was 
 ' darling Ireland.' ' How troubled my brodier would 
 be about 4arhng Ireland ! ' she had written in a letter : 
 but she was Lord Edward's great-granddaughter, whereas 
 Lady de Vesci was a Scotswoman, Lord Wemyss' sister — 
 so true it is that when Ireland makes her own of one 
 who is not bom hers that one may love her beyond 
 her own children. 
 
 It was a privilege to be there. Sorrow never wore a 
 brighter face. Lady Wemyss talked of many things of 
 great interest to me about Mr. Wyndham's Irish Chief- 
 Secretaryship, and as her hazel eyes sparkled with 
 vivacity one was irresistibly reminded of her collateral 
 ancestress, Lady Sarah Lennox, perhaps the most 
 fascinating woman of the eighteenth century, which is 
 to say a good deal. 
 
 The Uttle circle was reading — ^with a keen apprecia- 
 tion of what was fine in the new books — Hozv Jonas 
 Found His Enemy, that fine spiritual romance of Dr. 
 GrevOle MacDonald, which one imagines must be of 
 the things that endure when much that is acclaimed 
 passes away into oblivion. 
 
 I was deeply impressed by the magnanimity of spirit 
 in Lady de Vesci's deep affection for the people about 
 Abbeyleix. She had been a devoted wife, was a dis- 
 consolate widow, and in the Land League days there 
 had been trouble and estrangement between her husband 
 and his tenants. There was only grief for those days, 
 
FRIENDS 257 
 
 never resentment, and always a sympathetic and gener- 
 ous understanding of the causes which led to an aliena- 
 tion that must have wrung her heart. The only stories 
 she told of that time were of the kind and gentle things 
 that had happened, despite all the trouble. She liked 
 to dwell on the real goodness of the people where any 
 one less great-hearted than she would have found 
 abundant cause for bitterness. She had brought up her 
 one child to love Ireland like herself. 
 
 There was magnanimity, too, in Lady Wemyss' talk of 
 the terrible overthrow of Mr. Wyndham's hopes in 1904. 
 If he had lived and achieved his desire, how different 
 had been the history of these days ! He never was the 
 same man afterwards. His sister, who shared so many 
 of his feelings — •' When we were children, George and I 
 were the Fenians of the family,' she said — ^had no con- 
 demnation for any of those who had hounded him out 
 of his beneficent public life. No, she did not think 
 that this one or that one was to blame. ' He was so fuU 
 of all he was going to do for Ireland,' she said, ' that he 
 
 could not help talking about it, and so it got to 
 
 and .' I remembered Lady Glenconner saying, 
 
 ' My brother is nothing if not magnanimous.' 
 
 I shall always remember the Sunday evening when I 
 walked with Lady de Vesci through the overgrown 
 gardens. She was only at the house for a visit, and it 
 was shut up for the greater part of the year. No one 
 cared for the gardens when she was not there. One 
 could see how beautiful they had been ! Everything 
 was overgrown : the fountain was dry ; the nymphs 
 and goddesses of the gardens had green tears running 
 down their discoloured marble cheeks. It must have 
 been a beloved garden. The lady who had loved and 
 mourned it walked there a queen — ^an exiled queen. 
 
 Afterwards we went into the church where a marble 
 statue of her husband lay like a Knight Templar over 
 against a corresponding statue, both recumbent, wearing 
 the strange and lonely dignity of the recumbent marble. 
 Many people have said to me since that Lord de Vesci 
 
258 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 was a most beautiful person. The sculptor had done 
 his noble beauty no wrong. But these are holinesses. 
 I must always be grateful for that hour. 
 
 After I came back from that visit I realised a desire I 
 had always had from the time I read a story of Henry 
 James's far back in the 'Nineties, The Altar of the Dead. 
 
 I had always wanted an Altar of the Dead for myself, 
 so that the beloved dead should not feel forgotten. And 
 now the need became more urgent. Many people who 
 had been comforted by my letters and verses had been 
 sending me the photographs of their boys, asking for 
 prayers for them. 
 
 There is a room at BrookhUl, a long, narrow slit of a 
 room, furnished, when we came, as a bedroom, of which 
 the people about the place spoke as ' The Chapel.' 
 Asking questions, I discovered that a Catholic family 
 of Blakes had had BrookhiU for five years, and had used 
 this room as a chapel, having Mass said in it regularly. 
 Its use was plain enough when one had the clue. A few 
 hooks in a recessed door would have taken surplices. 
 There is a beU outside the door to call the household 
 to Mass. There is a table to serve as a vesting-table, 
 and arrangements for water and washing. 
 
 The bedroom furniture went packing. The floor was 
 stained and a rug laid upon it. The window was filled 
 in with an Ecce Homo, a Mater Dolorosa, and adoring 
 Angelico angels. Sacred pictures were hung on the 
 walls. A big Crucifix took the central place ; below 
 it a long, low table covered with a fair, white cloth. On 
 the table and hung about the Crucifix are the pictures 
 of the Ever-Living. A little rosy lamp throbs there 
 always, with candles, blessed on Candlemas, in low, silver 
 candlesticks. There are the flowers in their season. To 
 either side of the Crucifix are two parchment scrolls. 
 At the head of the long list of names on one is : ' There 
 were boys ... in the streets thereof.' At the foot is : 
 ' For whom thanks be to our Lord Jesus Christ.' At 
 the head of the other scroll is : ' Fear not, Uttle Flock,' 
 There is nothing else but a frie-Dieu, 
 
FRIENDS 259 
 
 So my desire was achieved, I have my Altar and my 
 Oratory. I dare avow that it is to be felt at the centre 
 of the house — a Silence, a Recollection, a Peace. I have 
 never gone there that I did not feel They were glad, 
 especially when I came after an absence. When I went 
 away for an absence I always said good-bye to them. I 
 have always felt they were sorry to see me go. Very 
 few of those young knights were known to me while 
 they lived, but I feel them a bodyguard. I think it is 
 they who have banished fear from the house. 
 
 I have brought in soldiers sometimes to see the 
 Oratory. Once it was half a dozen Royal Scots whom 
 we entertained on their passage through, one Sunday. 
 I asked them first if they were Presbyterians and strict. 
 ' Not so strict,' they said. I had been afraid they would 
 think my Oratory Popish. But no ; they entered tip- 
 toe : they went away with eyes dimmed, speaking in a 
 whisper. To be sure they had all been at the Front. 
 
 Some people say : ' But how sad ! ' I do not feel it 
 sad. I feel as though the little place welcomed Them 
 in from the night and rain. So safe and happy is it that 
 I have knelt there at midnight in the long, light summer 
 quite alone, with no light but the faint light of the lamp. 
 
 It is primarily for the soldiers, but there are others 
 whom the soldiers would recognise. 
 
 An imaginative Irish maid-servant said to me one.day : 
 ' Sure, who could be afraid of a house with that holiness 
 in it ? ' She added that They would take care of my 
 own boys. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 • THE COLD WINTER 
 
 We had more visitors at BrookMU that autumn than we 
 had had in a year at Carradoyne. At one time all our 
 bedrooms were occupied. We had Mrs. T. P. O'Connor ; 
 we had Lord KiUanin ; we had Susan and Susan's niece, 
 and Lily Yeats, and Margreita Beer, and various soldiers, 
 as well as our own circle. One morning in the small 
 hours our elder boy arrived home for a week's leave before 
 going to Salonika. The cadet came back from Sandhurst. 
 There were other visitors. It was as compared with 
 Carradoyne, as though the clock had struck and the 
 Palace of the Sleeping.Beauty had come aHve. 
 
 That winter was given up again to work and the 
 increasingly great correspondence. 1916 ended with a 
 great sadness in the tragical death of my publisher of 
 many years — ^Mr. Reginald Smith of Smith and Elder. 
 He had published my second novel. The Dear Irish Girl, 
 in 1898, and since then some score or more novels, 
 with my Twenty-Five Tears; Lord Edward: a Study in 
 Romance ; and The Book of Flowers (in the latter I colla- 
 borated with Miss Frances Maitland, whose address I 
 should very much like to have). He very rarely turned a 
 book of mine from his door, never a novel — ^and if he 
 had to say No he said it with such evident discomfort to 
 himself that one had to assure him hastily that it did not 
 really matter a bit, or very Httle, though that was some- 
 thing he could hardly beheve. He had the grand manner 
 which, alas, is fast disappearing. He had a profound 
 respect for the traditions of the great pubhshiiig house 
 which he represented and for ^e Cornhill Magazine 
 which he edited. I don't think Thackeray and the great 
 aw 
 
THE COLD WINTER 261 
 
 days were ever quite out of his mind. Therefore, being 
 kind-hearted, he even overestimated the blow rejection 
 meant to an author. When he received you into his 
 room, with the three long windows overlooking Waterloo 
 Place, you always felt as though you were consulting a 
 West-End physician and your fate was in doubt. He 
 was typically English. There was an English simplicity 
 about him. Once, as I tucked a quite substantial cheque 
 into my purse, I said : ' I come to Smith and Elder for 
 prestige, and I go to other publishers for money,' which 
 was only an audacious jest, but I left him looking a little 
 bewildered. He was very kind, indeed, about money, 
 and was always willing to pay down — an excellent and 
 too uncommon thing in publishers. One always felt 
 assured of honourable dealing with this great old firm. 
 When my first novel The Dear Irish Girl most unex- 
 pectedly ran into two or three editions, Mr. Reginald 
 Smith at once raised my royalty by 10 per cent. 
 
 Ah, well, the passing of 15 Waterloo Place, S.W., is 
 like the passing of an epoch. Those who might have 
 carried on the tradition died, one on the battle-field, the 
 other in a German prison. The War kiUed Reginald 
 Smith as it killed those two. He belonged to all sorts 
 of things that are gone for ever — to the old decorous, 
 seemly, and honourable life of England of the Victorian 
 days. I think that life had begun to break up even before 
 the War, with the arrival of the novus homo, and the 
 love of eating and drinking and the baser luxuries of 
 existence which gave him his chance. 
 
 I remember my first visit to 15 Waterloo Place. I 
 approached it in a spirit that Reginald Smith would have 
 appreciated. Lest I should arrive uncomfortably hot I 
 took a hansom ; it was a very hot day of a hot English 
 summer ; but, after all, though I arrived beautifully 
 cool, the octagon room, ht from overhead and not airy, 
 with the pictures of the Brontes and George EUot and 
 all the great people round the walls, to say nothing of the 
 excitement of the visit, made me present myself the 
 colour of a beetroot. 
 
262 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Reginald Smith usually met his visitors on the stairs 
 as they were being shown up, for he escorted the parting 
 guest to the street door always ; it was part of his old- 
 fashioned courtesy. If one did not meet him on the 
 stairs he was always at the door of his room to receive 
 you, and you sat down in a chair from which some very 
 distinguished person had just arisen. Everything about 
 15 Waterloo Pkce kept up the old dignified traditions, 
 and Reginald Smith's secretary, Mr. Howard, was his 
 understudy. For a long time we thought Reginald 
 Smith wrote the body of his letters as well as the 
 signature, or at least dictated it. But the letters were 
 just the same after he was gone ; it was stiU his voice 
 speaking, and at last we recognised Mr. Howard, for 
 whom diat severance must have meant many endings. 
 
 I am glad my pubhshing began — almost began — with 
 a house of such traditions. I could remember the time, 
 not so far oflF, when editors and pubhshers were god-like 
 persons to me. I have not altogether lost the habit, so 
 far as certain editors and certain publishers are concerned. 
 Could I have kept it if I had begun writing for and 
 publishing with Mr. So-and-So or Messrs. Blank ? 
 
 The ' almost begun ' has reference to the fact that I 
 did not quite begin with Smith and Elder. My first 
 novel was pubHshed by Laurence and Bullen, both 
 dehghtful people, but hardly business men at all, I think. 
 They were among the very few publishers I have known 
 who would have turned the largest circulation from their 
 doors if it had no literary quality, as it usually has not. 
 A. H. BuUen used to groan discontentedly over the fact 
 that people who could write poetry or read their classics 
 should bother writing novels. The last volume of poems 
 he published for me was on an entirely unbusinesslike 
 basis. ' I 've just enough paper to publish a little 
 edition of you,' he said ; ' but I shan't publish any more.' 
 So that meant a Umited edition, and the book, Experiences, 
 went out of print almost immediately. It is one of my 
 best books. 
 
 I had another delightful publisher at one time who 
 
THE COLD WINTER 263 
 
 never could be got to make up his accounts. He was 
 adamant if you asked him to pay for anything ; but on 
 the other hand he was always ready to lend you fifty 
 pounds. 
 
 1 91 7 arrived with savage weather which continued 
 over Easter. On Easter Sunday, 9th April, a neighbour 
 who was with us for the week-end stood gloomily by the 
 windows computing how many lambs and sheep should 
 be lost to him in the snow-drifts. We were feeding our 
 own animals on ivy, the fields being deep in snow. 
 There were three months of it. At night, if you lifted 
 a window-blind, you saw the starved little spectres of 
 rabbits going against the white background. They 
 ate the bark off all the trees, and across the snow there 
 was a path trodden of many little furry feet going to the 
 trees. The high walls of snow, with the tunnel cut 
 between, were by the roadside on May Day. That 
 winter, I should think, effectually cured all who had 
 hankerings after ' a good old-fashioned winter.' 
 
 When it was at its most malignant I got a frost-bitten 
 ear, accompanied by neuralgia. Although I walk steadily 
 in all weathers I have sometimes found an enforced 
 house-keeping not disagreeable. There are so many 
 things waiting for a time when one must stay indoors. 
 But unfortunately the malaise was against all the things 
 I dearly wanted to do. I did very much less work than 
 usual, although my letters continued, and to be cut 
 off work is a sad thing for one who cannot lay down the 
 pen for a day or two without secret desires after it, as 
 though it were drink or a drug. People have sometimes 
 said to me that in such and such conditions I need not 
 work so hard. I h^ve heard them aghast. Why, if 
 writing was drink I should be a drunkard : I simply 
 could not refrain from it. It has filled my life with 
 happiness. 
 
 Midmost of the malaise I had an agreeable distraction, 
 which almost made me forget all about it. An editor in 
 Tunbridge Wells discovered that chapter of my Middle 
 Tears, entitled ' Southborough,' and started a discussion 
 
264 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 in his paper, heading it ' Miss Katharine Tynan's Social 
 Indictment of Tunbridge Wells.' 
 
 Well, that was hardly accurate. The chapter had very 
 Uttle to do with the Wells, as I pointed out later. South- 
 borough was another matter. The most kindly and 
 courteous opening article, accompanied by a long 
 editorial note, was written by a London editor Uving at 
 the WeUs. H^ was followed up by another literary man, 
 equally kind. Indeed Tunbridge Wells, seeing that it 
 was supposed to be indicted, behaved most handsomely. 
 It was not until the tale of my wickedness reached 
 Southborough that the fun began. 
 
 I had no idea Southborough was so opinionated. 
 When I had read the many letters from people who had 
 chosen Southborough for its beautiful situation as a 
 place to hve in, and had been haughtily turned down by 
 Southborough society, I began to be conscience-stricken, 
 because, by comparison, Southborough had opened her 
 arms to us. Who could have thought of the dreadful 
 penalties of the social boycott at such places as South- 
 borough ? I had really no quarrel with Southborough 
 society except that on the whole it was dreadfully dull 
 and narrow. A^Tien I wrote the offending chapter I had 
 no intention of giving offence. I was, in a manner of 
 speaking, talking to myself, recalling old memories, and I 
 did make grateful references to the people who were 
 not to be classed as duU and narrow in my knowledge of 
 the place. 
 
 Presently the heading of the column or two of the 
 Kent and Sussex Courier, which was devoted to my 
 critics and my friends for some weeks, became ' The 
 Social Indictment of Southborough.' The editor had 
 invited correspondence. It came with a rush and a 
 tumble. If I was not overwhelmed, if I am able to 
 select a bouquet of flowers from the many letters, despite 
 my being a thin-skinned person, it must be because I was 
 and am sustained by the knowledge that I was avenging 
 other people's wrongs, while being quite unaware of it 
 or of any of my own. 
 
THE COLD WINTER 265 
 
 But I must have had wrongs of my own which accounted 
 for the otherwise inexpHcably stifling atmosphere of the 
 beautiful place, or else my neighbours made themselves 
 out in their anger to be more ill-natured than they really 
 were. I may own up that I had said that the spectacle, 
 as seen from a high window of the Hand and Sceptre 
 Hotel at the top of Southborough Common, of many 
 old ladies, clad in black, crawling up the many little 
 paths of the Common to the church at the top where 
 Pendennis was married, was like a procession of black 
 beetles. It was : I had to be accurate. The statement 
 was provocative. Here are some of the ' back answers.' 
 
 In her entomological researches on Southborough Common it 
 is strange that Miss Tynan did not discover that crawling among 
 the black beetles was a specimen of the yellow caterpillar {Femina 
 Peganoidd). — Another Entomologist. 
 
 So a certain gifted novelist did not like Southborough ! I am 
 not surprised. On turning up her record in Who's Who I find 
 that her favourite recreation is ' Talking to a Good Listener.' 
 All is explained. To be talked to death by a gifted novelist is 
 what some evangelical black beetles cannot stand. 1 And they 
 showed it. — Auditor Tantum. 
 
 What is Mrs. Hinkson grumbling at ? Surely she ought to be 
 most grateful that so many black beetles are gathered into one 
 internment camp, leaving the rest of the country freer for her 
 to live in. The pity is that she ever came to hve among the 
 poor dears on whom she now treads with aU her weight. I 
 wonder if many of them have been crushed by her ponderous 
 onslaught, and whether those she praised are grateful ? The 
 question is whether those who knew Mrs. Hinkson and the black 
 beetles would rather have the black beetles or Mrs. Hinkson, 
 and whether they were as glad to be quit of her as she of them. — 
 Neutral. 
 
 I never met Mrs. Hinkson socially, but remember seeing her 
 walking on Southborough Common, and was told she was a 
 writer, ' Katharine Tynan.' The name was unknown to me — 
 mental mouldiness, no doubt. I thought at the time how much 
 
266 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 more sightly her appearance would have been dressed in blade 
 than in colours. . . . 
 
 I sympathise with the unfortunate neighbours whose Sunday 
 rest was disturbed by the refined Sunday pastimes of the Hink- 
 sons. — ^An Old Lady Who Did NOT Call. 
 
 I shall be much obUged if you will find room in your paper for 
 this explanation of some of the causes of Mrs. Hinkson's unpopu- 
 larity. Mrs. Mnkson, not having the power of seeing herself as 
 others see her, will perhaps be surprised to learn the opinions of 
 strangers. . . . She says that she made as much noise as she 
 possibly could while playing croquet on Sundays. That her 
 family certainly did, and on every other day of the week also. 
 My garden is only separated from the one they occupied by a 
 wooden fence, which shuts out sight but not sound. During the 
 summer they were there I had no peace nor pleasure in my 
 garden. Children yelling and screaming, dogs barking, goats 
 bleating, and the never-ending hammering of croquet balls kept 
 up a perfect pandemonium from morning tiU night. . . . The 
 black beetles might well have retaliated by comparing her to a 
 large yellow slug. — ^A Resident of Southborough. 
 
 Well, under the sledge-hammer attacks — I have 
 omitted one or two manifestly unfair and untrue state- 
 ments of the ' Resident ' — ^I might well have been 
 crushed as flat as the flattest black beetle, if I had not 
 had the other side to uphold me. I think Southborough 
 must have thought I deserved what I got, for no kindly 
 word came from there, but I had plenty of kindness 
 from Tunbridge Wells, beyond the ardent championship 
 of my dear Sarah Grand, who took these letters dread- 
 fully to heart. Side by side with the asperities I have 
 quoted, there were many letter-writers who expressed 
 their thanks to some one who had said what they wanted 
 to say. ' We spent sixteen miserable months there,' 
 wrote one lady, ' before we shook the dust of South- 
 borough from our feet for ever.' ' I am obliged to this 
 lady,' wrote another, ' for exposing this im-Christian 
 conduct. Life is sad enough without such cruel and 
 silly manifestations'; while 'A Presbyterian' de- 
 nounced the line of demarcation drawn so tightly in 
 
THE COLD WINTER 267 
 
 such places as Southborough. ' You must be a Tory, 
 and outside their Church you are a heretic. I am de- 
 lighted with Katharine Tynan.' 
 
 My copy of The Middle Tears is as unsightly as some 
 of the Southborough ladies found me, for the many 
 letters it contains describing the cruelties of the social 
 boycott which people had suffered at Southborough. I 
 suppose such a thing cari be very cruel. We never knew 
 that the system existed. When we asked a lady to tea 
 and she did not come we only thought she had forgotten. 
 When some people did not call we put it down to four- 
 fifths of us being Papists, a thing as rare as a white black- 
 bird at Southborough. We never even suspected that 
 a certain lady, who was very friendly to us, had powers 
 of life and death over society in Southborough, and appa- 
 rently sometimes wielded them unmercifully. Some of 
 the other side justified my misdeeds — for example, the 
 one who thought I had been rather unkind but stUl 
 wrote : 
 
 The influence of church and chapel over the place seemed to 
 make the residents shrink from being seen at any entertainment 
 not run by the religious bodies, and I have many times been told 
 that to attend anything of the kind meant social and reUgious 
 excommunication for the unfortunate who had been caught in 
 the act. I well remember the feeling aroused when a prominent 
 resident offered to build a hall where people might spend some 
 of their leisure hours in innocent recreation. The controversy 
 which raged round this proposal was carried on during all the 
 years of my residence. Although the haU was eventually erected, 
 the feeling when I left seemed to be as strong as ever. I have 
 seen emissaries of the church people watching the people who 
 entered the hall when it was let for other than a religious purpose. 
 Is it to be wondered at that hypocrisy and cant were rife in the' 
 place ? 
 
 Dear Barry O'Brien, who visited Tunbridge Wells 
 that summer, while The Middle Tears was stiU in great 
 demand at the libraries, wrote to me that the real 
 offence I had given was in describing a picture (or two) 
 called ' The Straight and Narrow Way,' which was 
 
268 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 apparendy a favourite in Southborough. In this picture 
 (or one of them) among all the other Doomed, rushing 
 headlong to perdition, there was a whole train-load, of 
 soldiers. I am glad Southborough has changed its mind 
 about the soldiers. I should like to think it had made 
 a bonfire of that and other uncharitable pictures and 
 books and leaflets ; and I do hope it does not any longer 
 patronise thase obvious rascals ' The Escaped Monk ' 
 and ' The Runaway Nun.' I may commend to its 
 inhabitants the story of Father James Healy, who was 
 asked to explain the reason why a CathoUc priest should 
 have changed his rehgion. ' It is always one of two 
 reasons, my dear sir — ^Punch or Judy.' 
 
 What a novel there is in such places ! That gentle 
 satirist, Jane Austen, lived at Tunbridge in the dip under 
 Southborough. She would have made a meticulous 
 masterpiece of the life and the social autocracy. I may 
 not return to study it again at close hand, even if I were 
 equal to the subject. But all the same there were some 
 very nice people at Southborough, and I am perfectly 
 well aware that I should not have said ' beetle ' despite 
 the inevitableness of the comparison. And I did get in 
 a summing-up reply, and was mean enough to rejoice 
 in the superiority of my practised pen over the angry 
 people of Southborough, while I enumerated those to 
 whom my criticism could not possibly apply. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 ALLEVIATIONS 
 
 Let me, before I end with the shadowed years, pay 
 tribute to some of those whose kindness and companion- 
 ship made our exile more tolerable. There were some 
 people who would have been kind to us if we were only 
 near enough. If we had settled near Castlebar or West- 
 port, as we might have done, there would have been 
 plenty of society of the bridge-playing and tennis- 
 playing kind. But I was never sorry for my isolation 
 at Claremorris, where no one played bridge or tennis, 
 because I know that with the best will in the world I 
 should only have offended my neighbours, since I have 
 so little time for social recreations, and in country towns 
 the people are apt to take their recreation strenuously, 
 as a business. Not that I am above bridge. Some of the 
 pleasantest of my English days were spent with the 
 bridge-playing coteries of Chipperfield and King's 
 Langley — ^but my particular war-work, which I cannot 
 help believing, with humility, I was sent to Claremorris 
 to do, admitted of little time for recreation. Even 
 reading a novel became somewhat of a difficulty for lack 
 of time. 
 
 Let me see ! During my three years and a bit in 
 Mayo I have, as a mere matter of book-making, written 
 nine novels besides Lord Edward : a Study in Romance, 
 which is something more than a novel : two volumes 
 of reminiscences, three volumes of poetry, two school- 
 books, besides a great number of short stories, articles, 
 etc. I am not specially proud of this facility of mine ; 
 it has produced a good deal of honest work, with, of 
 course, a good deal of necessary pot-boiling, and it has 
 
270 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 made some few people happy beside myself. When, in 
 addition, I had taken on my correspondence with the 
 mourners of the War there was not much time left for 
 social observances. 
 
 Now I come to think of it, the Churches had most to 
 do with the alleviation of our lot. There was, first of all, 
 the Canon. The Canon took us by the hand at our 
 first coming.. He had taken the R.M., while yet I was 
 enjoying a bachelor existence at Shankill. The Canon 
 is an historian and a member of various learned societies 
 and Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities. He 
 is a fine, stately, dignified man, very handsome and with 
 beautiful manners. The best type of Catholic ecclesi- 
 astic is hard to beat for charm and bonhomie, and he is 
 of that type — ^in all his dealings a fine gentleman. 
 
 Before the R.M. had taken up his duties he wrote to 
 welcome him to Mayo. A little later he was welcoming 
 him to his house and hospitality, with a priests' diimer 
 thrown in. Now a priests' dinner is not open to every 
 heretic. Canon Hannay has lamented to me that in all his 
 years at Westport he had never been at a priests' dinner. 
 These functions are supposed, by outsiders, to be 
 Gargantuan banquets, where the wine or punch flows, 
 Hke the story-telling and the wit, fast and free. I don't 
 know whether the Gargantuan character exists only in 
 the mind of the Protestant Peri without the gates. I 
 have a memory of a Co. Dubhn priest saying to me once 
 with solemnity : ' I never sat to So-and-So's table but 
 once. There were some other priests there and one or 
 two laymen. The soup was good and the wine was 
 good, but you 'd never guess, Katharine, what he set 
 us down to eat — ^why, a hmi and a pair of geese ! There 
 was a dinner to set before priests ! ' 
 
 That belonged to a plenteous day. I have sat at 
 Irish dinners, which could not be called priests' dinners, 
 where tongue and chicken, boiled mutton, roast beef, ham, 
 turkey, and ducks were all to be found. I hope we shall 
 all be off rations before this appears in print. Still the 
 prodigality of the eighteenth century affected late 
 
ALLEVIATIONS 271 
 
 Victorian hospitalities. In my experience of the West 
 no such surfeit of good things is to be found at a priest's 
 or any other dinner table. 
 
 The R.M. accompanied the Canon to the priests' 
 dinner and enjoyed himself immensely. When they had 
 returned to the Canon's house, where he had a bed for 
 the night, the Canon said to him : ' I might have had my 
 doubts about taking you, but I had a feeling that I was 
 right to do it. It wasn't the first priests' dinner you 'd 
 been to ; you acted as one to the manner born.' 
 
 That friendship, so well begun, has continued and 
 flourished over our three years and more. The Canon 
 is, like all the best priests I have known, a boy at heart. 
 He is full of good stories himself, and always ready to 
 roar over yours ; he is a bookman, with a well-furnished 
 library, as well as an ecclesiastic and a gentleman, and 
 he is the best of hosts and good fellows, if he will excuse 
 such a phrase. He has that peculiar frankness with 
 those he trusts which belongs to the best type of man, 
 and he does not at aU object to criticism of his order 
 where the criticism is in reason. 
 
 I suppose it was an aftermath of the Penal Days which 
 made the priest sacrosanct in the Ireland of my youth. 
 A very prickly quickset hedge surrounded the priests, 
 by the will of the people, in those days ; and not only 
 the priests, but everything connected with the Religion. 
 That was the time when a careful parent would rebuke 
 you for saying you did not like a certain priest with 
 the remark that no one ever came to good who was against 
 the priests. All that has passed by, and I am sure the 
 priests do not regret it. There can be very little serious 
 criticism of them as priests ajid men, though one may 
 criticise if one is against them in poHtics. Their conduct 
 is practically beyond reproach. They are the best of 
 men and Irishmen. 
 
 You talk to the Canon as one man to another. There 
 are no barriers. Years ago a Catholic man said to me 
 that he did not like priests because they professed too 
 high a standard. Well, priests like the Canon and 
 
272 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Father Martin and Father Michael of our western days, or 
 Father Gilbert of our English days, professed nothing at 
 all. If they were better than other people, they pre- 
 tended no immunity for themselves or their class. Yet 
 scandal is practically unknown and the priest is every 
 one's friend who will trust him. 
 
 The Canon's nephew, also a priest, is a college pro- 
 fessor, a slight unassuming young man, who pubUshed 
 last year a book on Horace, which delighted the Times 
 Literary Supplement and others of the great EngHsh 
 reviews. No man ever carried learning more lightly. 
 He, too, can teU a good story, and, although he has as 
 yet nothing of the Canon's stateliness, he is not behind 
 him in beautiful manners. 
 
 Father Martin is far more of a recluse than the Canon. 
 He is also a student : he lives in a place so lonely that 
 he has told me he often went out on the side of the road 
 to exchange a word with a passing peasant about the pigs 
 ■or the potatoes. He confessed also that his clock, 
 furnished with the Westminster chimes, was great 
 company on a winter night. He lives in a house square 
 to all the winds that blow, a house of many windows, 
 which is flooded with sun when it is obtainable, and 
 beaten furiously by the winds and rains when they are 
 obtainable, which is much oftener. He has set a httle 
 coppice of pines and other conifers to make him a shelter 
 from the winds when it grows : as yet they but add to the 
 bareness. 
 
 He is a deUcate man, very like an early portrait — 
 Richmond's I think — of Cardinal Newman, very young- 
 looking : he might be only thirty, though I suspect he 
 has a good many more years to his credit than that. 
 The fourth Wednesday of the month has for some time, 
 and before emergency work broke up the estabHshed 
 order of Courts, been a red-letter day to him and to us. 
 To me it means, while the Court is sitting, a quiet 
 morning's talk, surrounded on every side by books — 
 piles of them on the tables and chairs as well as in the 
 bookcases — ^with one who knows the people through and 
 
ALLEVIATIONS a73 
 
 through, and in his easy way discovers them for you, 
 illuminating Unsuspected places by his knowledge and 
 sympathy. He is a subscriber to The Times and the 
 Times Book Club, so he is weU in touch with new books 
 and aflEairs : with the new poetry and belles-lettres as 
 with politics and the big issues of war and statesmanship. 
 
 I think the many windows of the house have a rela- 
 tion to Lady Aberdeen's health crusade, I remember a 
 splendid day last summer when he had to draw blinds 
 to shut out the dazzle of sun. 
 
 ' The climate 's changing,' said he. ' I remember 
 some years ago when the rain began one May Day and 
 iiever stopped till the end of the following year.' 
 
 I leave Father Martin and his books with the company 
 of his thoughts and. his Westminster chimes, for of late 
 the sequence of fourth Wednesdays has been broken, 
 and we have missed more than a delicate and gracious 
 hospitality, and go on to Father Michael, who came to 
 his little country parish from being * Head of a CoUege.' 
 Father Michael is a travelled man. He spent two years 
 in America, and he has an immense admiration for ' The 
 States,' as well as some additions acquired there to an 
 already rich vocabulary. ' The States ' is to Father 
 Michael what London, Paris, or Rome is to other people. 
 You find him reading the Literary Digest where Father 
 Martin and the Canon read The Times and the Spectator. 
 So great is his admiration for the Stars and Stripes that 
 he will ' rise ' for a word against them. But whatever 
 else he took away from the Land of the Dollar, he took 
 no materialism. With a considerable amount of shrewd- 
 ness never was a man less worldly. The bishop who 
 made him head of a college was a wise Father in God. 
 The college, be it understood, was a college for the 
 training of young priests. Certain precious lessons 
 Father Michael could have imparted. He does not even 
 trouble for his daily bread : he trusts : if you were a 
 mean person you need never give Father Michael any- 
 thing, and it must be remembered that the Irish priests 
 live on the voluntary offerings of their flocks, He 
 
S74 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 explained to me once that no list of donations was read 
 from the altar because he who had given less might be 
 put at a disadvantage with him who had given more. I 
 acknowledge that tiis practice of perfection is hard on 
 Father Michael's curate. 
 
 You may begin by thinking Father Michael eccentric 
 in speech : you very soon come to find him lovable and 
 admirable. He preaches quaint sermons, and quite en- 
 joys the amusement he causes. It was Father Martin who 
 said humbly : ' It must often be hard on people of educa- 
 tion to Usten to our sermons, for we are not trained to 
 preach.' Well, Father Michael has a great reputation 
 as a preacher with his flock. I have often noticed that 
 the Irish peasant never laughs at a sermon, though the 
 sermons are occasionally very picturesque. When the 
 more sophisticated person is laughing, very often to the 
 equal enjoyment of the preacher, the peasant is finding 
 depths of profundity even in a jest. 
 
 Father Michael it was who described the phght of the 
 priests under the Penal Code in a startling phrase : 
 
 ' It isn't so very long ago since the Irish priests were 
 running over the lulls and valleys of Ireland with a five- 
 pound note on their heads.' 
 
 But amusement gives place to edification when you find 
 of what a real stuff of holiness Father Michael is made. 
 
 Our first introduction to him was, like the lady who 
 was introduced through a cow — ^by means of a rick of 
 turf. Our predecessor had got rid of all his turf, leaving 
 us to start life in Mayo in mid-winter, fuelless. We 
 discovered that Father Michael had bought the large 
 rick of turf and his curate the small one. As soon as 
 they knew our phght, each laid his rick at our service, not 
 accepting a penny of profit on the transaction. 
 
 Some time ago we were again turfless, with turf at 
 famine prices, for the wet weather of 1917 beginning 
 just about the time the people had done tibeir big crop- 
 ping and persisting, all the turf except that belonging 
 to a fortunate few lay out in the bogs all winter. We 
 were on a hunt for turf when Father Michael came driv- 
 
ALLEVrATlONS ^75 
 
 mg round a corner of the road on his way to a Conference. 
 He stopped to speak, and we asked him th6 monotonous 
 question, ' Do you know any one who has any turf for 
 sale ? ' ' Are ye out of it ? ' ' We are.' ' Johnny ' (to 
 his man) ' there 's a rick I bought last year not touched ? ' 
 ' There is,' said Johnny, not looking round. Disapproval 
 was in the set of Johnny's shoulders. ' It 's good, dry 
 turf, isn't it ? ' 'It is.' ' You can have that,' said 
 Father Michael. ' But will you have enough for your- 
 self ? ' ' Och, sure, what do I want with it ? I 've 
 enough to go on with tiU the cutting. Johnny, will the 
 Resident Magistrate's man be able to find the rick ? ' 
 ' Annybody 'U insthruct him,' said Johnny gloomily. 
 ' How much ? ' ' Not a penny beyond what I paid for 
 it in the bog last year.' 
 
 It is good to hear Father Michael laugh despite the 
 sciatica which cripples him, and sometimes makes ascent 
 and descent of the low altar steps a difficult thing. 
 Sick calls in the winter are not conducive to the cure of 
 sciatica, when one sometimes has to ford a river broken 
 loose in flood, with water to the knees or above them. 
 Indeed there is a deal of unselfish holiness in these 
 West of Ireland priests. 
 
 One evening when Lord KiUanin was staying with us, 
 he met me on the stairs. He, by the way, has an un- 
 common interest in priests and sermons. 
 
 ' Your parish priest has just arrived,' he said, ' and 
 another priest, a little man with spectacles. Who is 
 the other priest ? ' ' The parson,' we said with some 
 pride, for we congratulate ourselves that ours is one of 
 the very few houses in Connaught where the priest and 
 the parson sit down to the same mahogany. The parson 
 was, too, among our alleviations in the loneliest winter 
 with his gift of music, his cheerfulness, his kindly 
 common sense. 
 
 I must say a word of gratitude to the Fitzgerald- 
 Kennys, who, almost alone among the county people, a 
 few of whom called, extended us the hand of friendship, 
 They represented for us the qualities with which we 
 
276 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 endowed the Irish race for the children, while yet they 
 lived in England. It was fortunate, perhaps, that they 
 did not come first to Mayo, else they might have thought 
 our tales fairy-tales, except for a very few people who 
 justified us. The Fitzgerald-KennyS; living in their big, 
 squarely-buUt, rather gaunt and comfortable house, 
 typically West of Ireland, near Lough Mask, are the 
 embodiment .of the Irish virtues of hospitality and 
 generosity. Their house was the first built in these parts 
 after CadioUc Emancipation, before which no Catholic 
 cc^ld build or Uve in a house of more than one story. 
 The newly-emancipated built their house three stories 
 and wide in proportion. The next Catholic house was 
 Moore HaU, now the property of George Moore, the 
 novelist. Moore Hall went one better than Clogher 
 House, being, in every way, a size bigger than Clogher. 
 There is a little group just there, by Lough Mask, of old 
 Catholic families who survived the Penal Days — ^Blakes, 
 Fitzgerald-Kennys, Moores. I dare not say Mr. George 
 Moore is representative. Clogher House, with its big 
 rooms, its private chapel, and aU the things that belong 
 to its old consideration is a fragrant place, fragrant of 
 kindness, of gaiety, of sweetness of heart, of hospitality. 
 One leaves those kindly doors laden with gifts of fruit, 
 of vegetables, and flowers, even though one has a garden 
 of one's own. Yes, indeed, the Fitzgerald-Kennys are 
 to be counted of the alleviations. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 ONE OF THE SUMMERS 
 
 In that May of 1917 — such a beautiful sudden rushing 
 May with us — our boy in Macedonia had what he caUed 
 ' a little scrap,' when he and his patrol were all but 
 captured by Bulgars. One thing he told us had the 
 literary sense and gave one a thrill ! ' It was pitch 
 dark,' he wrote, ' the moon not having yet risen, and as 
 we remained perfectly stiU we could hear the naked feet 
 of the Bulgars running in the long grass which here 
 grows above your head.' 
 
 A little later Major Patrick Butler, D.S.O., whom 
 we have known from his small boyhood, wrote to 
 Pamela : 
 
 ' I must write to tell you that your brother has done 
 so well that he has qualified for a Military Cross. I do 
 hope he gets it. Let me quote his adjutant's words in 
 a letter just received. 
 
 ' " The Brigadier wished to secure from incursions 
 
 of over-inquisitive patrols, so that they would not become 
 
 aware of . He therefore ordered that two strong 
 
 patrols should go forward and keep out all enemy 
 
 seekers after knowledge. Our hero (that is your brother) 
 
 was detailed for the first of these patrols. He had 
 
 men and a gun with him, and about yards in 
 
 front of our outpost line his scouts bumped into the 
 enemy. They found that the latter were too strong, 
 and were even adventurous and apparently bent on 
 making prisoners, for they pursued our scouts so that 
 these had to fall back on the main patrol. The enemy 
 at about three times our strength came up with Hinkson's 
 party, and a lively scrap ensued. He eventually drove 
 
 277 
 
278 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 them back with Lewis gun and rifle fire and — ^best of all 
 — ^in spite of his extremely uncomfortable position he 
 hung on until dawn, when he withdrew having achieved 
 his object in keeping off the enemy patrols." 
 
 ' I knew he would be all right. They are all enthusi- 
 astic about him. I do hope he gets the Cross. Anyhow 
 his Divisional General has made a note of his name.' 
 
 Major Butler, like his distinguished father, belongs 
 to the Royal Irish Regiment, and has been and is 
 exceedingly kind to our boy. 
 
 That May, too, our younger boy got his commission 
 in the Dublins. He had set it before him to join one 
 of the Irish regiments most cut up by the war, and the 
 Dublins seemed to fill the biU, besides which he and 
 Pamela have a peculiar devotion to DubUn. He went 
 off to join the 3rd Battahon at Cork, being still nearly 
 a year under age for active service, and Pam went paying 
 a round of visits : so we were alone till we joined her one 
 sultry day of the beautiful June weather. 
 
 We were in Dublin at the time of the release of the 
 Sinn Fein prisoners, and I went down to Westland Row 
 to see Madame Markievicz come in. It was long since 
 I had seen anything of the sort, for my years since the old 
 Parnell days had been, tiU 191 2, staid and sober English 
 ones. To be out of the crowd I went into the hotel 
 opposite the station and looked on at the scene with 
 something of painful interest, for it recalled the days 
 of long ago. How intrepid one had been then, going 
 into the packed crowds — ^by night too ! This was a day- 
 light crowd, a very quiet, orderly one. The Dublin 
 Metropohtan Police, those genial giants, kept a passage 
 for the traffic with shoulders and feet set square. They 
 say the foot of a Dublin Metropolitan is equal to any 
 one else's yard. So vast is it that one has an idea that 
 it could be walked on without causing pain, as though 
 sensation could not belong to the whole of such a foot. 
 For a time trams continued to pass, with young ladies 
 in white on the top waving Republican flags. AU the 
 DubUn women and babies were out, and small boys 
 
ONE OF THE SUMMERS 279 
 
 were balancing themselves dangerously on the spiked 
 area railings, clambering up lamp-posts, squatted on the 
 railway bridge, anywhere and everywhere there was a 
 good view and a dangerous one. Now and again the 
 crowd sang the ' Soldier's Song,' or cheered to relieve its 
 pent-up excitement. After a time the trams ceased 
 to run through Westland Row, and passengers were 
 transferred, proceeding on foot through that crowded 
 thoroughfare, which was quite an easy thing to do, since 
 the crowd was agreeable and parted easily to let people 
 through. The miUtary were held in reserve, but very 
 wisely out of sight. The D.M.P.'s were quite equal to 
 the job. 
 
 Now and again a soldier passed, and excited no more 
 attention than any one else. One of the hotel staff 
 standing near me, an English girl, could hardly be pre- 
 vailed upon to look, she had been so frightened in the 
 Rebellion. But it was a very harmless crowd. 
 
 Close by the railway station exit stood a motor, with 
 a chauifeur standing by negligently. The car belonged 
 to Dr. Kathleen Lynn, the daughter of a West of Ireland 
 parson, who is associated with the Sinn Fein movement.. 
 There were several false rumours of the arrival. The 
 mail train was late. But like a good many other things — ■ 
 appendicitis for example— there was no doubt when she 
 did come. Ireland is nothing if not dramatic. As 
 Madame emerged from the station the chauffeur's coat 
 was off, and there he stood a volunteer in full uniform. 
 A little later she passed, standing up, holding out her 
 hands to the crowd who were clasping them and kissing 
 them. 
 
 A few seconds later she was gone— the crowd swept 
 after her, and the street was empty with the sadness 
 setthng down on it of summer evening in the city. 
 
 A curious little incident happened earlier in the day. 
 Pamela and I had turned into a smart shop to speak 
 to a lady in a highly responsible position. We had 
 known her as a governess in a Protestant and Con- 
 servative family of our acquaintance, and the position 
 
28o THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 she occupied demanded no less those steadying and 
 assuring convictions. She said to us very unexpectedly, 
 and with a quiet excitement : ' Are you going to see 
 Madame come in ? ' ' Probably, if we can make time.' 
 ' Do make time, and come to-morrow and tell me about 
 it.' The next day we came to tell her about it. ' I ' 
 heard her myself,' she said. ' I just got out in time to 
 hear her at th^ Custom House.' 
 
 It was the triumph of the woman she was thinking of. 
 It reminded me of what I had been told by an English 
 Benedictine, that in the wild days of the Suffrage 
 Movement the convents fluttered and were uneasy. 
 
 The next day we were in a very smart Dubhn shop, 
 and the elderly man who attended us, taking our politics 
 for granted, cast his eyes up to Heaven in dramatic 
 horror over the release of the Sinn Fein prisoners and 
 their reception, piously wishing that all the disturbing 
 elements were put down with a strong hand and the 
 good old days of the gentry were come back. He pro- 
 tested too much. ' I believe,' said I, ' you are a Sinn 
 Feiner yourself.' His eyes watered : he giggled con- 
 vulsively, while he appealed to a young lady behind the 
 counter just to hear what the lady had accused him of. 
 She looked away absent-mindedly, remarking ; ' I 'm 
 sure you 're not that anyway, Mr. Blank.' 
 
 We were at another counter a little later, when Madame 
 came in with her dog and, standing quite near us, pro- 
 ceeded to buy herself a length of tulle to wear round 
 her neck according to a fashion of the moment. It was 
 most amusing to see the prisoner of Lewes Jail, who was 
 wearing a very smart cornflower blue dress, select just 
 the kind of tulle she wanted and arrange it about her 
 neck. 
 
 While we watched her with interest there came the 
 gentleman I had accused of being a Sinn Feiner, panting 
 with excitement. ' I came to tell you,' he said, ' that 
 the Countess is in the shop. Perhaps you don't know 
 her by sight. If you will follow me I shall point her 
 out to you,' 
 
ONE OF THE SUMMERS 281 
 
 The morning following Madame's entry we went to 
 poor Willie Redmond's Requiem Mass. We did not 
 strive for good places, believing, erroneously as it turned 
 out, that the centre of the church would be reserved. 
 So we departed humbly to a side aisle and knelt among 
 the people. 
 
 There had been a crowd in the street which swelled 
 momentarily, much the same crowd as yesterday except 
 that there were few men ; the adventurous Dublin woman 
 with a baby clasped to her breast and three or four others 
 holding her skirts much in evidence. There was the 
 same crowd of delightful Dublin urchins adorned in- 
 differently with the Irish Republican colours and the 
 soldier-father's regimental button. The police had no 
 difficulty in making way for the motor-cars of the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, the Judges, and other highly placed 
 persons. Every one who was any one in the official 
 and social life of Dublin was there : and the old Arch- 
 bishop, who was John Redmond's political enemy, 
 officiated at the Mass. The people among whom I 
 knelt had come to pray, not to stare. I am bound to 
 say that there was plenty of room in the aisles. 
 
 Every one craned their necks to watch for John Red- 
 mond passing up to the front seat reserved for the 
 mourners. Poor John Redmond, so soon to follow his 
 beloved brother ! 
 
 A little later, staying at a country house, I again came 
 into accidental touch with Madame Markievicz. It was 
 a West of Ireland country house, and she had been 
 discussed by some visitors in an, unfriendly fashion. 
 There was a ten miles' drive to the station. The day 
 we left, I had the front seat by the chauffeur, a loyal 
 ex-soldier and a Protestant, whose little boy, the child 
 of an English mother, had deHghted us by his rendering 
 of an Irish poem one day we visited the National School. 
 We talked. Quite unexpectedly he mentioned Madame 
 Markievicz. 
 
 'My father was stud-groom at Lissadell,' he said. 
 ' He was terribly fond of his horses. He used to say he 
 
282 TEIE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 could coax any horse : he didn't often fail, but when he 
 did he was terribly cast dowA. He 'd never spare him- 
 self : he couldn't bear to use the whip : he always said 
 there was some way of gettijig at die horse without 
 flogging if only he knew it. 
 
 ' Well, one day, he had a terrible tussle with a divU of 
 a horse, and, in the long run, he had to turn him into a 
 loose-box an4 leave him there, kicking and squealing. He 
 was quite worn-out and down-like about it, and he sat on 
 a big stone in the yard to recover himself, and, heated 
 and all as he was, he got a terrible chill that turned to 
 pneumonia, and he all but died. He would have died 
 if Miss Con hadn't sat up with him night after night 
 and nursed him through it. 
 
 ' Another time my mother was near her confinement, 
 and she was trying to wash the clothes in a tub in the 
 kitchen and Miss Con came in, and she just put her 
 away from the tub and washed out the clolies herself. 
 
 ' She was the pick of the basket,' he added ; ' she was 
 a wild, kind girl.' 
 
 Some time that summer we were at Spiddal for a few 
 days with Lord KiUanin, who leads a feudal life there. 
 No thought of Republicanism reaches you in Spiddal 
 House, looking delightfully across Galway Bay to the 
 Aran Islands and the coast of Clare. I 'm sorry to say 
 that I passed through Galway without seeing any of 
 the sights that time. The most excellent of hosts had 
 arranged for an afternoon of sight-seeing, but it was 
 very hot weather when we started, and we had a couple 
 of punctures, so that we arrived at Galway at five o'clock 
 instead of at three. The punctures were worth it, 
 for the delicious old man at Clare-Galway, wearing 
 the white bawneen — i.e. woollen jersey — of the Aran 
 Islanders, who remained bent double the whole time a 
 puncture was being mended. He had a wonderful old, 
 wrinkled face of curiosity : his old, gnarled hands were 
 spread on his knees : he looked somehow the Spirit of 
 the Past marvelling at the Present. If one could only 
 have made a picture of him ! 
 
ONE OF THE SUMMERS 283 
 
 Lord KiUanin took us down in his car to Spiddal, 
 while our own went back home. On the sea wall going 
 down hy Salthill we saw the ' dry bathers.' A great 
 portion of Connaught — ^the peasantry — go to Salt- 
 hill every year for the ' dry bathing,' which con- 
 sists of sitting on the sea wall and getting as much 
 of the benefits of the salt water as is possible in 
 that way. 
 
 A year earlier, on our way to Abbeyleix, we had 
 been swamped between Roscommon and Athlone by 
 ' dry-bathers ' going to meet the Galway train at the 
 latter station. We had first-class tickets and they had 
 third, but do you suppose that mattered ? Not a bit of 
 it ! We had a nice travelling companion, a rough-rider 
 in the Welsh Guards, who had, with an engaging frank- 
 ness and friendliness, showed us the photographs of his 
 family. He was most obliging in helping in the women 
 with their bundles and babies. We bore the incursion 
 as one does in Ireland. At the next station a distracted- 
 looking elderly porter prepared to usher in more ' dry- 
 bathers ' — ^we were already sitting on each other's knees. 
 He saw the absurdity of it, but he was plainly at his wits' 
 end as to where to bestow them. ' It '11 only be a 
 station or two,' he said tentatively. ' No, no,' I cried, 
 and barred the door against further passengers. ' We 
 are already most uncomfortable.' 
 
 He went off sorrowfully to another carriage, the ' dry- 
 bathers ' following. ' Th' impidence o' thim ! ' said the 
 dry-bather who was sitting on my knee. 'Is it to 
 desthroy us altogether they 'd be doin' ? ' 
 
 ' Sure, there 's some people 'ud do or ax anything,' 
 said the one who had eclipsed the Welsh Guardsman 
 except for an ear and a bit of dust-brown hair. 
 
 I have said that life at Spiddal House was feudal. It 
 is the one big house in a region of extreme poverty. 
 All around are small cabins amid enormous boulders of 
 rock ; between the rock are little ravines which are 
 cultivated down one side and up the other. Lord 
 KiUanin spends most of his time at Spiddal. His 
 
284 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 country-town, so to speak, is the town of Galway. The 
 fine road from Galway to Spiddal is jocularly known as 
 ' KiUanin's Avenue.' He knows every man, woman, 
 and child about Spiddal, and probably in Galway town, 
 and calls them by their Christian names. Spiddal House, 
 originally a small country house, he has built on to and 
 adorned with open loggias, very agreeable in a fine 
 summer, and a square tower. The pillars of the loggia 
 are decorated by a native artist. He has buUt a church, 
 of which he is justly proud, from the design of an Irish 
 architect of striking and original talent : it is lit dimly 
 with Irish glass from the atelier of Miss Sarah Purser : 
 aU is native, and the whole effect is austerely charming. 
 Doubtless it will take some time for the people, and 
 many of the priests, to get used to it. They miss the 
 cheerfulness of Munich glass and Munich painted 
 statues, besprinkled liberally with gold. 
 
 Lord KiUanin stands out among the West of Ireland 
 peers as one who is not only a man of the world and 
 affairs but one interested in art and literature. When he 
 visited us he turned over with satisfaction the new books 
 on our table, glancing at some precious privately-printed 
 memoirs of soldiers fallen in the War, most highly gifted, 
 beautiful and young, the very names of whom are as a 
 fragrance. He expressed himself as delighted with ' the 
 oasis of light and culture in the West,' which he had 
 found at Brookhill, and repeated the phrase many times 
 as though he liked it, as we did. 
 
 Lord KiUanin represented Galway in more than one 
 Parliament before he went to the Upper Chamber. 
 Once he won a hotly contested election by this argument. 
 He has a" persuasive voice, with, if not exactly such a 
 brogue as made his father's wit a richer thing, at least 
 something that suggests a brogue. 
 
 ' If a landslide was to blot out Galway to-morrow,' he 
 said to the electors, ' it would not very particularly affect 
 Mr. So-and-So ' — (the Nationalist candidate) — '■ although 
 he would be sorry of course ; whereas, if a landslide were 
 to blot out Galway, for me it would mean the end of all 
 
ONE OF THE SUMMERS 285 
 
 things. Everything I cared for and was interested in 
 would be involved in that landslide.' 
 
 He won the election on what is known as ' the Land- 
 sHde Speech.' 
 
 After breakfast at Spiddal in the month of July we 
 used to go down to the shore to see the salmon brought 
 in glittering in the nets. It was not long after the 
 memorable Clare election, and Lord KiUanin told us 
 how he had learnt the result one evening as he was 
 watching the emptying of the salmon nets. Across the 
 water he saw a sudden bright light. He watched it, 
 thinking it was the light of a ship. Then another 
 sprang up and another tiU the hilly coast of Clare was 
 lit as far as he could see it. Then he knew that De Valera 
 had won the seat, for that part of Clare was his strong- 
 hold. ' Mr. de Valera's constituency,' he always called 
 the blue dimness lying across the Bay. 
 
 He liked to walk about Spiddal and show you every- 
 thing. Down at the harbour he would stop to speak to a 
 barefooted little boy, asking him for his brothers and 
 sisters by name. He took us down the strongly built 
 little pier with its breakwater. ' We had a wretched 
 harbour here,' he said, ' and a breakwater that was 
 washed away in every storm. George Wyndham came 
 down here when he was Chief Secretary, and saw the 
 need of a new pier and breakwater. ' I don't know how 
 I can do it,' he said, ' there 's no fund available for it.' 
 Then he thought a bit. ' I have it,' he said joyfully. 
 
 ' There 's a surplus over from ' I forget from what 
 
 public works there was a surplus. Anyhow he built 
 the pier and breakwater for the poor fishermen of 
 Spiddal, as he built the strong defences for the farmers 
 of Ireland. May his memory be as imperishable in the 
 hearts of the people. 
 
 One of those mornings at Spiddal I wrote a long 'letter 
 to Francis Ledwidge, to whom I had not written for 
 some time. It was, I find by my diary, the 27th of July. 
 On the 31st I had a letter from him telling me about a 
 long poem which he had dedicated to me, which appeared 
 
286 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 later in the English Review. By the same post Lord 
 Dunsany received the poem. On the 8th of August I 
 heard that Francis Ledwidge had been killed on the 
 morning of the 31st of July, just about the time his letter 
 reached me. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 
 
 I THINK it was in 191 3 I met Francis Ledwidge with 
 Lord Dunsany at the Private View of A. E.'s pictures 
 in Dublin, which used to take place in the autumns of 
 the incredible period, Ante BeUum. He was then con- 
 tributing to the Saturday Review. He or some one else 
 sent me a copy containing a poem of his within the week. 
 He must then have been quite a new discovery. 
 
 He had a high-coloured, eager, winning face. Perhaps 
 it was the excitement made the high colour. I remember 
 that he was wrapped in a big frieze coat, as though some 
 one had carried him off unawares to what used to be 
 soniething of a fashionable function, and he, protesting 
 that he was not dressed for the like, had wrapped him- 
 self up in the big coat. I can see the eager, gentle face, 
 under the dark soft hair, with the desire to please obvious 
 in it. He was very humble and deferential to an older 
 writer. There was nothing self-conscious about him. 
 He was entirely simple and sincere. 
 
 A couple of years passed before his first book came to 
 me for review. Perhaps indeed it was 1912 when I first 
 met him, for Lord Dunsany, in his Preface to Songs of 
 the Fields over the date June 19 14, mentions that two 
 years earlier when he was ' wasting Juiie ' in London he 
 received the copy-book of Francis Ledwidge's poems. 
 He adds to the Preface a year later, when Francis 
 Ledwidge had been nine months in the army and had 
 attained to the rank of corporal. He served in Gallipoli, 
 in Serbia, on the Western Front, was wounded once, not 
 badly ; went back again when the wound healed, and 
 
 287 
 
288 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 was killed by a fragment of a shell on July 31st 1917, 
 the first day of the new offensive. 
 
 I don't know how he can have got in the tinae in a 
 grocer's shop in Dublin about which Lord Dunsany 
 writes, telling us how he broke away and tramped thirty- 
 miles to his mother's cottage. That grocer's shop in 
 Dublin must indeed have been a trial to die poet, though 
 it is quite possible that he may have found some there 
 to appreciate his gift. But he must have missed the seat 
 by the roadside and the procession of the Seasons, the 
 stars and the secret things of the fields and groves and 
 ' the wind on the heath.' 
 
 Reviewing his first book I found an essential beauty — 
 a Greek sense of beauty, to use a cUche and a ratber 
 worn-out one — ^perfect in phrases and moments, with as 
 yet an unsure setting. He had not then quite mastered 
 the art which came so easily that it had only just to be 
 discovered. But his phrases were magical. 
 
 And wondrous, impudently sweet, 
 Half of him passion, half conceit. 
 The blackbird pipes adown the street. 
 
 And this of April : 
 
 And she wiU be in white, I thought, and she 
 Will have a cuckoo upon either shoulder. 
 
 And again there is a lovely line : 
 
 Sweet as rain-water in the blackbird's flute. 
 
 AH these lovely things gave assurance of the full beauty 
 that came a few months later in Songs of Peace. I do not 
 propose to quote from an already pubUshed book, which 
 those who love poetry may acquire for themselves. By 
 the time it was published he had become a traveller. 
 He had been at pretty well all the Fronts of war. He 
 had seen the dreadful things which all soldiers must see 
 in these days. The Chariot of War had driven over him 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 289 
 
 and left him untouched. He was still the boy who sat 
 by the roadside in Meath and loved the fields and the 
 thorn-hedges and the long roads fringed with cow- 
 parsley, and the blackbird's note, and the colour of blue 
 with which all his poems are coloured, and his mother, 
 and all simple and quiet loves. Reviewing Songs of 
 Peace I had the thought to write to him. Apparently 
 the letter travelled for some time before it reached him, 
 but it did reach him and his answer is dated January 6, 
 1917. It is eagerly, enthusiastically friendly and grateful 
 for the advance on my part. He was the most friendly 
 thing alive while he was yet alive, 
 
 ' If I survive the war,' he wrote, ' I have great hopes of writing 
 something that will live. If not, I trust to be remembered in 
 my own land for one or two things which its long sorrow inspired. 
 
 'My books have had a greater reception in England, Ireland, 
 and America than I had ever dreamt of, but I never feel that my 
 name should be mentioned in the same breath with my con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 ' You ask me what I am doing. I am a unit in the Great War, 
 doing and suffering, admiring great endeavour and condemning 
 great dishonour. I may be dead before this reaches you, but I 
 will have done my part. Death is as interesting to me as life. 
 I have seen so much of it from Suvla to Strumnitza and now in 
 France. I am always home-sick. I hear the roads calling, and 
 the hills, and the rivers wondering where I am. It is terrible to 
 be always home-sick. 
 
 * I don't hke to send you a poem in pencil. If I can borrow 
 a fountain pen I will transcribe one for you. If I go home again 
 I should certainly like to Come and see you. I know Claremorris, 
 BalHnrobe, and aU the little towns of Mayo.' 
 
 In his next letter there are two poems enclosed. 
 
 IN FRANCE 
 
 The silence of maternal lulls 
 
 Is round me in my evening dreams. 
 And round me music-making rills, 
 
 And mingling waves of pastoral streams. 
 
290 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Whatever way I turn, I find 
 
 The paths are old unto me still. 
 The hiUs of home are in my mind. 
 
 And there I wander as I wiU. 
 
 HAD I A GOLDEN POUND TO SPEND 
 
 Had I a golden pound to spend, 
 
 My love should mend and sew no more. 
 
 And I would buy her a little quern 
 Easy to turn on the kitchen floor. 
 
 And for her windows curtains white. 
 
 With birds in flight and flowers in bloom, 
 
 To face with pride the road to town 
 And mellow down her sunlit room. 
 
 And with the silver change we 'd prove 
 The truth of Love to life's own end. 
 
 With hearts the years could but embolden, 
 Had I a golden pound to spend. 
 
 The letter in which these were sent talks with a happy 
 confidence. I am not to think he is lonely. There are 
 a few about him who care for the only things that matter 
 as he does. And he has letters from home, from brothers, 
 and sisters, and cousins, and his loving mother. They 
 are all artists in a way ; one collect flowers, one examines 
 into causes and thinks he has discovered the cause of 
 gravity : ' When I am at home we are aU happy together.' 
 
 I was with the first British troops who landed at Salonika. 
 We spent all last winter fighting the Bulgars in the bills of the 
 Varda and Uskub. ... I daresay you know the horrors of the 
 retreat. I love Serbia. It is a delightful country even seen, as I 
 have seen it, under the worst conditions of weather, etc. I spent 
 a year in the East going first to the Dardanelles. I was in Egypt, 
 Cyprus, Mitylene, and had a pleasant fortnight in Naples. 
 
 His next letter gives some indication of his odd ways 
 of writing. 
 
 When I read the proofs of Songs of Peace there were several 
 poems I hardly recognised as my own, for I scribble them off in 
 odd moments, and, if I do not give them to some one, they become 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 291 
 
 part of the dust of the earth and little things stuck on the ends 
 of hedges when the wind has done with thenv My MSS. are 
 scattered about two hemispheres, some lost for ever, others 
 wandering in the corners of newspapers, like so many little 
 Abrahams, changing their names as if they had given over an old 
 faith and were set on new endeavours. I lament them in sober 
 moments, and forget them again when some new tune breaks 
 out in my mind. 
 
 I wish you would come to Louth. There are charming places 
 about Dundalk and Drogheda, and the people are so beautiful. 
 When I am in Louth I always imagine voices are calling me from 
 one distance to another, and at every turn I half expect to 
 see Cuchullin stride over the hUls to meet some new champion 
 of Maeve. You could only be happy in Louth or Meath. . . . 
 
 What a pity the birds must suffer as we do ! I had a special 
 way of feeding them when I was at home in winter. I used to 
 put potatoes on the garden wall for the crows and under a cover- 
 ing of sacks spread bread and meal for the smaller birds. It was 
 taboo to open the kitchen door, for that would disturb them. 
 
 ' So A. E. has been telhng you of my doings,' he says in another 
 letter, ' but he did not know that the poems which I destroyed 
 were very amateurish ; and how sick I was of them, for I had 
 repeated them until they became vapid. I try to keep my poems 
 now by sending them to Lord Dunsany, or home, but out here 
 one has not always the time or the convenience, and, after all, 
 when the pleasure of writing them has passed, what does it matter? 
 I stiU have hundreds. My next book will be the best of mine. 
 
 ' I may be in Ireland for May Day yet.' 
 
 But May Day found him still in France, and the 
 longest letter he has written me is dated 31st of May. 
 I fear I was slow in answering his letters. He always 
 wrote at once with a great understanding and forgiveness. 
 
 Your letter came yesterday evening like melody from the woods 
 of home, as welcome as rain to the shrivelled lips of June. It 
 was like laughter heard over a low hiU. I would have written 
 to thank you for the sweets, only that lately we were unsettled, 
 wandering to and fro between the firing-Hne and resting billets 
 immediately behind. This letter is antedated by two hours, but 
 before midnight we may be wandering in single and slow file, 
 with the reserve line two or three hundred yards behind the fire 
 trench. We are under an hour's notice. Entering and leaving 
 
292 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 the line is most exciting, as we are usually but about thirty yards 
 from the enemy, and you can scarcely understand how bright the 
 nights are made by his rockets. These are in continual ascent 
 and descent from dusk to dawn, making a beautiful crescent from 
 Switzerland to the sea. There are white lights, green, and red, 
 and whiter, bursting into red and changing again, and blue 
 bursting into purple drops and reds fading into green. It is all 
 like the end of a beautiful world. It is only horrible when you 
 remember that every colour is a signal to waiting rdnforcements 
 or artillery, and, God help us if we are caught in the open, 
 for then up go a thousand reds, and hundreds of rifles 
 and machine-guns are emptied against us, and all amongst 
 us shells of every calibre are thrown, shouting destruction and 
 death. We can do nothing but fling ourselves into the first 
 shell-hole and wonder as we wait where we wiU be hit. But why 
 all this ? 
 
 I am indeed glad to think you are preparing another book of 
 verse. Will you really allow me to review it ? I don't want money 
 for doing it. The honour would be more worth than money. I 
 reviewed Sennas CSullivan's poems a few years ago, and hope I 
 helped him a littie to a wider public, though he has not yet the 
 fame he deserves. His very name is a picture to me of lakes and 
 green places, rivers and willows, and wild wings. Tou give me a 
 picture of a long lane, with many surprises of flowers, a house 
 hidden in trees where there is rest, and beyond that mountains 
 where the days are purple, and then the sea. A. E. sets me 
 thinking of things long forgotten, and Lord Dunsany of gorgeous 
 Eastern tapestry and carpets. Do you get such impressions from 
 the books you love ? I met a traveller in Naples who told me 
 that he never read Andrew Marvell but he remembered a dunce's 
 cap and a fishing-rod he had when a boy, and never could trace 
 the train of thought far enough back to discover where the con- 
 nection lay. 
 
 I am writing odd things in a httie book whenever I can. Just 
 now I am engaged in a poem about the Lanavm Shee, who, you 
 remember, is really the Irish Muse. One who sees her is doomed 
 to sing. She is very close to you. I am writing it in the tradi- 
 tional style of the ' Silk of the Kine.' Here are the opening 
 verses : 
 
 Powdered and perfumed the full bee 
 Winged heavily across the clover. 
 And where the hills were dim with dew, 
 Purple and blue the West looked over 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 293 
 
 A willow spray dipped in the stream, 
 
 Moved many a gleam of silver ringing, 
 And by a finny creek a maid 
 
 Filled all the shade with softest singing. 
 
 She told me of Tir n'an Og. ... 
 
 And there, she told me, honey drops 
 
 Out of the tops of ash and willow. 
 And, in the mellow shadows. Sleep 
 
 Doth sweetly keep her poppied pillow^ 
 
 And when the dance is done, the trees 
 
 Are left to Peace and the brown woodpecker, 
 
 And on the western slopes of sky 
 The day's blue eye begins to flicker. 
 
 She tries many devices to woo a lover, and to secure his pity 
 laments one who loved her for long but one day left her for 
 earth, ' fairer than Usna's youngest son.' 
 
 You rode with Kings o'er hills of green. 
 
 And lovely Queens have served your banquet, 
 
 Sweet wines from berries bruised they brought, 
 And shyly sought the lips that drank it. 
 
 If I do not tire of it you will read it all some day (d.v.). I 
 enclose a little thing written on Ascension Thursday. It is 
 time I remembered you would be weary of this letter and will 
 close with regret. 
 
 ASCENSION THURSDAY, 19 17 
 
 Lord, Thou hast left Thy footprints in the rocks, 
 That we may know the way to follow Thee, 
 
 But there are wide lands opened out between 
 Thy Olivet and my Gethsemane. 
 
 And oftentimes I make the night afraid. 
 
 Crying for lost hands when the dark is deep, 
 
 And strive to reach the sheltering of Thy love 
 Where Thou art herd among Thy folded sheep. 
 
 Thou wilt not ever thus, O Lord, allow 
 My feet to wander when the sun is set. 
 
 But through the darkness, let me still behold 
 The stony bye-ways up to Olivet. 
 
294 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 1 9.6. 1 7. 
 
 This is my birthday. I am spending it in a little red town in 
 an orchard. There is a lovely valley just below me, and a river 
 that goes gobbling down the fields, Hke turkeys coming home 
 in Ireland. It is an idle little vagrant that does no work for 
 miles and nules except to turn one miU-wheel for a dusty old man 
 who has five sons fighting for France. I was down here earlier 
 in the spring, vAxcn all the valley wore its confirmation dress, 
 and was glad to return again in the sober moments of June. 
 Although I have a conventional residence I sleep out in the 
 orchard, and every morning a cuckoo comes to a tree quite close, 
 and calls out his name with a clear voice above the rest of the 
 morning's song, Hke a tender stop heard above the lower keys 
 in a beautiful organ. 
 
 I am glad to hear the experience of your boy in Macedonia. 
 I had a rather narrow escape above Lake Doiran in the winter of 
 1915. Ten of us went out to rescue a few sheep which we had 
 discovered on a mountain top, and we were attacked by a Bulgar 
 force. We sought the cover of rocks in a deep ravine, and we were 
 able to keep the attackers off, although we could not return until 
 help arrived. We secured three sheep, after which we named 
 the battle. I wrote the song of it for the Sunday Chronicle in 
 Manchester last year. 
 
 I hope will be duly rewarded for his coolness and bravery, 
 
 for, after all, is not every honour won by Irishmen on the battle- 
 fields of the world Ireland's honour, and does it not tend to the 
 glory and delight of her posterity ? ' 
 
 You are in Meath now, I suppose. If you go to Tara, go to 
 Rath-na-Ri and look all around you from the hills of Drum- 
 condrath in the north to the plains of Enfield in the south, where 
 AUan Bog begins, and remember me to every hill and wood and 
 ruin, for my heart is there. If it is a clear day you wiU see 
 Slane HUl blue and distant. Say I will come back again surely, 
 and maybe you will hear pipes in the grass or a fairy horn and 
 the hounds of Finn — I have heard them often from Tara. 
 
 Be sure to remember me to Lord Fingall if he is at home. 
 
 I am greatly afraid Lord Edward will never reach me. . . . 
 
 My next book is due in October. Did you ever know I wrote 
 a play ? It is a one-act thing called A Crock of Gold, and is about 
 a man who went to dig for gold which another man dreamt about. 
 I showed it to many in London and Dubhn, and they liked it. . . . 
 I will show you the play when I come to see you. 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 295 
 
 About the mine — it made a greater explosion in the news- 
 papers than on Hill 60, but was beautiful all the same. 
 
 It is growing dusk now : it is * the owls' light,' and I must 
 draw to a close. 
 
 With this letter came three poems. 
 
 I 
 
 THE FIND 
 
 I took a reed and blew a tune 
 
 And sweet it was and very clear, 
 To be about a Kttle thing 
 
 That only few held dear. 
 
 Three times the Cuckoo named himself 
 And nothing heard him on the hiU, 
 
 Where I was piping like an elf ; 
 The green was very still. 
 
 'Twas all about a Uttle thing, 
 
 I made a mystery of sound, 
 I found it in a fairy ring 
 
 Upon a fairy mound. 
 
 II 
 STANLEY HILL 
 
 In Stanley HiU the bees are loud, 
 
 And loud a river wild. 
 And there, as wayward as a cloud, 
 
 I was a litde child. 
 
 I knew not how mistrustful heart 
 
 Could lure with hidden wile. 
 And wound us in a fateful part 
 
 With dark and sudden guile. 
 
 And yet for all I 've known and seen 
 
 Of Youth and Truth reviled. 
 On Stanley HiU the grass is green 
 
 And I am stiU a child. 
 
296 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 III 
 THE OLD GODS 
 
 I thought the old gods still in Greece 
 
 Making the little fates of man, 
 So in a secret place of Peace 
 
 I prayed as but a poet can : 
 
 And all my prayer went crying faint 
 Around Parnassus' cloudy height, 
 
 And found no ear for my complaint. 
 And back unanswered came at night. 
 
 Ah, foohsh that I was to heed 
 
 The voice of folly, or presume 
 To find the old gods in my need. 
 
 So far from A. E.'s Uttle room. 
 
 The last of these letters is dated July 20th. It is 
 poignant, as Francis Ledwidge's name is now a poignancy 
 and a fierce indignation that such as he should be killed, 
 and after nearly three years of service. Presently out of 
 his memory will come nothing but sweetness, a bruised 
 sweetness if you will, because he has gone to join the 
 great company, taking with him so much of his lovely 
 message for the world and especially for his own country. 
 
 We have just returned from the line after an unusually long 
 time. It was very exciting this time, as we had to contend with 
 gas, lachrymatory shells, and other devices new and horrible. 
 It win be worse soon. The camp we are in at present might be 
 in Tir-n'an-Og, it is pitched amid such splendours. There is 
 barley and rye just entering harvest days of gold, and meadow- 
 sweet rippling, and where a Uttle inn named ' In den Neerloop ' 
 holds its gable up to the swallows, blue-bells and goldilocks swing 
 their splendid censers. There is a wood hard by where hips 
 glisten like Httle sparks, and just at the edge of it mealey (?) leaves 
 sway like green fire. I will hunt for a secret place in that wood 
 to read Lord Edward. I anticipate beautiful moments. 
 
 I daresay you have left Meath and are back again in the brown 
 wides of Connaught. I would give £100 for two days in Ireland 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 297 
 
 with nothing to do but ramble on from one delight to another. 
 I am entitled to a leave now, but I 'm afraid there are many 
 before my name in the list. . . . Special leaves are granted, and 
 I have to finish a book for the autumn. But, more particularly, 
 I want to see again my wonderful mother, and to walk by the 
 Boyne to Crewbawn and up through the brown and grey rocks 
 of Crocknaharna. You have no idea of how I suffer with this 
 longing for the swish of the reeds at Slane and the voices I used 
 to hear coming over the low hiUs of Currabwee. Say a prayer 
 that. I may get this leave, and give as a condition my punctual 
 return and sojourn till the war is over. It is midnight now and 
 the glowworms are out. It is quiet in camp, but the far night 
 is loud with our own guns bombarding the positions we must 
 soon fight for. 
 
 I hope your boy in Macedonia is doing well and that your other 
 boy is still in Ireland. 
 
 One is quite sure that the blameless soul of Francis 
 Ledwidge, before it sped on its way to its ultimate 
 Source and Goal, flew over the fields of Meath and 
 hovered a while near those scenes and friends for whom 
 he had so tender and faithful an attachment. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE SPRING 
 
 There is very little more to teU. Time" was when we 
 had imagined the Peace and the great rejoicings. It had 
 been hard enough during the strenuous years of the War 
 to be buried in Mayo. Whatever immunity it gave us we 
 had not asked for nor desired. But we had said to each 
 other early in the War : ' We must be in Dublin for the 
 Peace.' 
 
 But alas, the War dragged endlessly. Over and over 
 again there was the mirage of peace only to be blotted 
 out by the heart-breaking continuance of the War. And, 
 after a time, it came to us that, to be sure, there would 
 be no rejoicing for the Peace when it came. We had 
 suffered too much for that. We might emerge from 
 under the scourges, but our backs would be still 
 bloody. Ah, no, there would be no rejoicing; and 
 stiU the Peace receded ever further, tiU it seemed as 
 though it would be as Lord KUlanin, in a mood of 
 despair, had predicted. 
 
 ' There will be left two men, one dying, the other 
 dead ; and the dying man will say, " I have won the war." 
 And that will be the end of it.' 
 
 What a subject for Lord Dunsany. The two — one 
 dead, one dying, on an empty and crimsoned world ! 
 
 In September 19 17 our elder boy was in Egypt with 
 AUenby's army advancing through the desert. He was 
 of the army that captured Jerusalem, and of that I am 
 very proud. Our younger was snatched away from Cork 
 with his battahon of the Dublins, in the unexplained scare 
 of November 1917, when, according to Lord Wimbome's 
 excellent phrase, ' not a dog barked,' and was deposited 
 
THE SPRING 299 
 
 on the coast of Wales where, like Columcille, he ' turned 
 a grey eye towards Erin.' Fortunately, a little earlier, 
 he had used a period of ' resting '' after inoculation to 
 join us for a week-end in Dublin, which we enjoyed to 
 the fuU, spending our Sunday afternoon and evening 
 at Kilteragh with Sir Horace Plunkett. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bernard Shaw were among the guests, greatly to the joy 
 of the young Dublin Fusilier, who is nothing if not 
 democratic and has a real gift for politics as well as for 
 soldiering. The picture of the very young soldier arguing 
 vigorously with Mr. Shaw, his face lifted towards the 
 philosopher, who was no less vigorous, so that his long 
 beard waved in the wind of argument, remains with me, 
 the two heads standing out against the panelled walls of 
 the room. 
 
 Mr. Shaw had given me a very Shavian and pretendedly 
 sharp answer a little while earlier when I had gone 
 begging to him for some one. 
 
 That Sunday he came and sat down on a stool near me 
 in the verandah at Kilteragh. 
 
 ' I 'm afraid I wrote you a very rude letter,' said he. 
 
 ' It is a most valuable autograph,' said I, ' so charac- 
 teristic' 
 
 During our infrequent visits to Dublin — ^an Irish 
 Resident Magistrate has but thirty-six days of hoUday 
 in the year — ^we plunge into life, we see all manner of 
 interesting people, we pick up threads, we taste what 
 would be ours if we were not Mayo's, we Uve furiously, 
 and then back again into the wilderness for another 
 four or five months. We visited theatres, we tea'd with 
 the Convention staff, we met Patrick Butler, home 
 with the Salonika despatches, we saw dear A. E., we 
 had a glimpse of Lord MacDonneH, and a long after- 
 noon with \Lord Ashbourne just come from France. 
 We spent our second week-end at Gorey, with Lady 
 Esmonde ; Sir Thomas was unfortunately held up in 
 London by a chill ; and we saw our school-girl daughter, 
 who might have been with us but for the loneliness of 
 life in Mayo. 
 
300 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 We went back to the West buoyed up with the hope 
 of having our Dublin Fusilier for another week-end. 
 He had got leave, and he thought it worth while to 
 make the long journey from Cork to be with us for 
 forty-eight hours. Alas, he never came. It was almost 
 as bad as the Rebellion. Three chiU days went by before 
 word came to say leave was stopped ; and nearly a week 
 later a letter from that drear sea-coast in Wales. And, 
 after aU, ' not a dog barked.' 
 
 The winter has run out incredibly fast, the lonely 
 winter to which we had looked forward with dread. 
 The life in which nothing happens goes the fastest, 
 because it has no landmarks. It was even a very happy 
 winter, with messages coming constantly from die 
 .precious part of us out in the world. And the older one 
 grows the faster life gallops, like the Irish coachman who 
 keeps the gallant spurt for the avenue up to the house 
 and the end of the journey. I worked hard and wrote 
 many letters, and I went with the R.M. to his courts and 
 lunched with the priests, and every evening I went down 
 to the kitchen and read a book to my two faithful servants 
 and friends for an hour or so. It was an hour they and 
 I enjoyed, for they too having followed us into exile, 
 were most truly of the alleviations. Also I had long 
 country walks with the dogs — two Boche dogs, i.e. 
 Poms, and an Irishman. On Sunday evenings the kind 
 parson came and played Beethoven to us, and so the 
 winter ran out. 
 
 It had its sadnesses. The friend of my girlhood, 
 Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Shorter), died at Epiphany Tide ; 
 but then the War has robbed death of so many of his 
 terrors. We have grown used to him, because so many 
 of the young have plucked him by the beard and gone 
 gaily with him that one cannot be afraid. 
 
 One can hardly beUeve that the winter is over and the 
 spring come — 2l spring which stood at our door at the 
 Feast of Candlemas offering primroses instead of snow- 
 drops. Last night at midnight there was a tossing and 
 a chattering* of returning birds ; and the bare earth 
 
THE SPRING 301 
 
 trembles as it were with susurri of love-making birds, 
 while from the lake come the queer chuckles and gurgles 
 of the moor-fowl, although the wind is in the east. 
 Spring has come in such a guise that it is impossible not 
 to believe in her. She may prove a jade and snow us 
 under in April as she did last year — ^but for once I believe 
 in her and her delicate message of hope. For though I 
 shall not see it my children's children may see it that 
 the world will have passed from under the shadow into 
 such a spring light as was never dreamt of, and it will 
 have been bought for us by the sacrifice and the suffet- 
 ing of the dark years. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 IN WHICH THE STORY IS TAKEN UP AGAIN 
 
 I HAD put away the book out of my hand, written ' Finis,' 
 and added the date ' April ist, 1918 ' before the events 
 happened to which these Western years were perhaps 
 leading up. 
 
 Having finished the book and sent the typescript to 
 Messrs. Constable, we went up to Dublin, where we 
 were joined by the school-girl whom we had had to 
 do without that winter because Mayo was intolerably 
 lonely for a young thing with a perpetually-writing . 
 mother. We saw the very last of the Convention, for 
 we were at Kilteragh on the first Sunday of April when 
 Sir Horace and an army of Secretaries were busy on the 
 report. Lord Brassey was there talking Irish poUtics 
 and very keen for information from the R.M., and out- 
 side the official business there was much talk of con- 
 scription, and of the War, which was almost at its 
 blackest hour. Sir Horace was very weary and talked 
 with closed eyes. I think even his optimism had failed 
 him for the moment. 
 
 I should like to say with humility that about that 
 time I hope, I beheve, I was instrumental in accom- 
 plishing a great thing. Little by little during the years 
 of the War there had crept back into the newspapers— 
 presumably because good people had so many things 
 to think about — ^the adoption advertisements which, in 
 too many instances, were just cloaks for the baby-farmer. 
 I, with the infinite leisureliness of Mayo about me, had 
 time to read the columns of my English papers where 
 these advertisements appeared, sometimes two, some- 
 times four, sometimes six a day, offering children of all 
 
 S02 
 
IN WHICH THE STORY IS TAKEN UP 303 
 
 ages, even up to eleven, for ' adoption,' with, the corre- 
 sponding advertisements of those willing to ' adopt.' Of 
 course there were some cases of genuine adoption, which 
 did not concern me. When there was ' No Premium ' 
 one might be sure. Now and again there was a cry. 
 Once it was for a three weeks' old baby — ' Love and 
 tenderness implored.' There cried the mother. One 
 wondered over the story behind such a cry. But the 
 others, the baby-farming ones — ^the poor Uttle slaves of 
 eight and nine and upwards who were to be handed 
 over to some one, no questions asked, — the precious little 
 children, who were to change hands sometimes, it was 
 proved, as often as eight times, getting to lower and 
 lower depths of misery till merciful death came : these 
 do not bear thinking on. 
 
 WTien I first noticed the advertisements I thought 
 some one with a better right to intervene than I would 
 do it ; but no one did, and as the scandal became more 
 flagrant I wrote an article in the Star, for which I had 
 been writing constantly during the winter and spring. 
 I followed up the article by a second telling the story of 
 a child-slave I once came upon in a boarding-house kept 
 by shady English people on the French coast. I made 
 one or two efforts to bring into the matter those who 
 had more right to speak than I, but without success. 
 Then the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Children took the matter up and the advertisements 
 disappeared from the respectable papers, where, doubt- 
 less, they had appeared by inadvertence of somebody. 
 No one seemed to have noticed the advertisements but 
 myself. For so far as I was instrumental in this good 
 work I am very proud and grateful. I would add a 
 word of general advice. If the War has an inner mean- 
 ing it must be that we are to be taught by losing our 
 children to save our children. May not every young 
 martyr of the War have bought with his blood ten 
 thousand lives ? When we begin setting our house in 
 order, let the order be — ' Shoot the baby-farmer at 
 sight ! ' 
 
304 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Those Star articles brought me a great number of 
 readers and a certain accession to my letter-bag. If I 
 write any more Reminiscences — ^and people seem to like 
 them very much indeed — ^I shall certainly have an 
 article on Star-Shells. They are usually shells, as, for 
 instance, those from the gentleman who abuses my 
 religion and pities its dupes through four pages, and 
 ends up with ' Sorry ! yours, etc' . . . 
 
 I take leave to doubt that ' Sorry.' There is another 
 gentleman who roundly curses what he calls my ' elabor- 
 ate camouflage of Sinn Fein.' There is a parson who, 
 beginning with his love of Ireland, works himself up to 
 a fine ironic passion at the end over some far-away 
 happenings of the Land League days, asking caustically 
 how I can explain away the murder of women as though 
 it were my trade. Then there are the much pleasanter 
 people. There is the altogether delightful sergeant 
 from the County of Mayo who writes to me from an 
 English camp enclosing poems written by his brother, 
 ' a young lad, as he follows the plough.' There is the 
 ex-R.I.C. man who has a reminiscence of Anna Parnell 
 in the Land League days, sprinting across fields and 
 bogs to arrive at an eviction before the bailiffs. ' It is 
 recorded in the newspapers of that date that Miss A. 
 Parnell lept from a ten-foot wall into the arms of a 
 man that was in the dyke below. Now, I am that man.' 
 
 But these and many other whimsies must wait for 
 another book, if there is to be another book. 
 
 The day after our visit to Sir Horace we had been 
 spending a deUghtful few hours with our friends. Judge 
 and Mrs. Ross, now Sir John and Lady Ross, at their 
 house, Oatlands, Stillorgan, where the dehcious garden 
 was out in aU its spring beauty. We came back very 
 happily to our hotel and found awaiting us a telegram 
 from our younger boy saying that he was ' going out ' to 
 France — in that black hour — and on his way for four 
 days' embarkation leave. 
 
 He came the next morning about 6.30. I had been 
 lying awake from dawn, when some early bird had gone 
 
IN WHICH THE STORY IS TAKEN UP 305 
 
 down the street singing ' The Soldiers' Song,' with elan. 
 There were very few nights at that hotel in which you 
 did not hear ' The Soldiers' Song ' — ^th^t excellent 
 marching song of the Sinn Feiners, written and com- 
 posed, I am told, by a plumber and a carpenter. At 
 last I heard his car draw up at the door, and presently 
 his dear young presence was in the dusky room. 
 
 Every minute of those four days seemed to run out 
 visibly and audibly. Always there were the hours, 
 growirig fewer and fewer, in which we should have him, 
 before he should be plunged into the maelstrom. Some 
 one I met in the street to whom I told that he was going 
 to France, said ' My God ! ' and turned away. It was 
 such a black hour, and one was always meeting some 
 one whose son was missing or worse since the dreadful 
 2 1st of March. We gave him a good time. All the 
 soldier-boys we were interested in were gone or going. 
 The girl was going to her first dance. There w^re no 
 dancing men to be had. A telegram to the Curragh 
 brought a reply ' Gone Overseas.' 
 
 What a lonely sound it had, like Julian Grenfell's ' We 
 sail at dawn.' All the profound melancholy of the dusk 
 of morning, the cold and creeping sea, the parting, the 
 death, were in those four words. The ' Gone Overseas ' 
 struck one cold to the heart at that moment. 
 
 We saw him off from Kingstown on the evening of 
 April 1 2th. He had with him a young officer, a couple 
 of years older than himself, who had rung me up earlier 
 in the day. 
 
 ' Is that Mrs. Hinkson ? You are not to worry about 
 Pat. / wiU take care of him.' 
 
 They parted very soon after landing in France, and I 
 don't think they have met since, but I pray that all 
 may be well with that golden-haired, pretty boy who 
 was to take care of Pat for nie. 
 
 Pat had dined the previous evening with a party of 
 soldiers, and had come back to the hotel, his eyes shining, 
 to impart to us the quips and cranks. Pat is a voluminous 
 talker, and has thought before he talks. Some one who 
 
 u 
 
3o6 THE YEARS OF TvHE SHADOW 
 
 met his brother in Palestine said that he talked even 
 more. But Pat's talk is on high politics, Democracy 
 and the rights of man ; he has sat at A. E,'s feet and 
 reads The National Being in the trenches ; and A. E. 
 is proud of his small disciple and recalls that Pat reminds 
 him of the most intellectual soldier he ever met, whose 
 name I cannot recall. What matter ! Although he is a 
 general he is doubtless a quite obscure one. 
 
 But when Pat is rowdy he is rowdy, and he thoroughly 
 enjoyed the humours of the soldier-dinner and the 
 irresponsible gaiety of the captain whose guest he was, 
 who came into the hotel next day and danced the Fox- 
 Trot round the drawing-room. That blithe spirit came 
 to the boat to wish Pat God-speed, and jested, and we 
 all jested almost to the end.-'^ The mother of a dead 
 soldier at the hotel had sent me a message by my girl, 
 ' TeU her I trust her not to shed a tear.' I kept trust. 
 
 We went down in a carriage fuU of young soldiers going 
 out. There were parties at every carriage door seeing 
 them off if not accompanying them to the boat. One 
 remembers the irresponsible chaff. ' I shall be thinking 
 of you floating round the Round Room of the Mansion 
 House on the 26th,' said a boy with a girlish face to a 
 young lady he was parting from. He was in the Flying 
 Corps. One wonders how he fared. 
 
 It was aU gay chatter and irresponsibility till the train 
 left Westland Row, but as soon as the train had started 
 there was silence. The serious partings were to come. 
 
 One remembers little things. The soldiers on the 
 lower deck were shouting and singing and the cheerful 
 captain said, ' Those fellows will let the Untersees know 
 they are coming.' It rained and the darkness came on, 
 and presently the boat began to slide away from the 
 pier. We watched till we could see it no more, and then 
 we turned away and went back to Dublin. 
 
 On our return journey we had a little adventure which, 
 if one put it into a novel, would set the reviewers to 
 talking about ' the long arm of coincidence.' We got into 
 
 1 He died of wounds just when the War was over. 
 
IN WHICH THE STORY IS TAKEN UP 307 
 
 a carriage in which were already two wounded soldiers — 
 one an R.A.M.C. man wounded in the knee, the other, 
 a boy with a most beautiful face, broken from head to 
 foot. They were out from Dublin Castle Hospital for 
 the afternoon. 
 
 We asked about the wounded boy, and were told that 
 he had had eleven operations, and was going on to 
 another. He was as gay as a lark over it, poor brave 
 thing. And so we feU into conversation. The R.A.M.C. 
 man, with a very Irish name, it appeared had been in 
 Salonika. We asked him if he had ever come across our 
 elder boy. He roared with laughter as he said : ' I 
 should jolly well think I have. I went out with him on 
 the old Caledonia. He was fearfuUy sick.' Then he 
 indicated the other boy : ' And this feUow was guarding 
 us in a destroyer,' he said. 
 
 Dublin was excited at that time over conscription. 
 As we walked through the streets one night it was very 
 like the time just before Easter Week, 1916. The streets 
 were crowded with people, and men stood in groups 
 talking. We went down through ' the open wound of 
 Dublin ' as some foreign journalist called SackviUe Street, 
 to the Gresham Hotel to see Lord Ashboiirne, and back 
 again to Maple's Hotel in KUdare Street, and everywhere 
 the feeling was sinister, and people were asking each 
 other : ' WiU they resist ? ' 
 
 Nearly every day while Pat was with us we went across 
 to Plunkett House for the disciple to sit at A. E.'s feet. 
 I have no record of the conversation, but I remember 
 that one day A. E. discussed the characters of Larkin and 
 James ConnoUy. Rather to my surprise his personal 
 liking was for Larkin. He said he had a warm, glowing 
 personality, while he seemed to find ConnoUy cold. I 
 had described Larkin as a man running with a torch. 
 He said that was a very just description, that he went 
 from place to place sowing the fiery seed, and when it 
 was sown he was done with that place and went on to 
 another. 
 
 He talked about conscription, and said that if the 
 
3o8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 country accepted it we should be giving away our whole 
 claim to be a separate nation. And in the next genera- 
 tion after conscription the people would have become 
 English, and that would be the end of the centuries of 
 Uving and burning desire for and insistence upon a 
 separate nationality. 
 
 When we bought a paper in the street the R.M. always 
 asked the newsboy what his politics were. The Dublin 
 newsboys eye you sharply before offering you a paper. 
 They can usually size up the customer who will ask for 
 the Evening Mail (Conservative), the Evening Telegraph 
 (Party), or The Evening Herald, (Free Lance). This 
 special newsboy eyed the R.M. and- apparently could not 
 place him for all his experience, for he said cautiously : 
 ' I 'm whatever gets me my tay.' 
 
 On the Sunday the R.M. and I went to Maynooth. 
 I had never seen the great ecclesiastical college before. 
 We were the guests of Dr. D'Alton, the Professor of 
 Classics and author of the brilliant monograph on Horace 
 to which I have referred earher. We lunched in company 
 with Dr. Walter M'Donald, Prefect of the Dunboyne 
 Establishment, and three other professors. But first 
 we saw the magnificent College Chapel and the various 
 precious possessions, including the vestments given by 
 the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, when she hunted with 
 the Kildares and visited Maynooth. One of her gifts 
 was a silver statue of St. George, so the significance of , 
 St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, had not penetrated her 
 mind. 
 
 The students were standing about the quad in groups, 
 their long black cassocks hfting in the cold bright wind 
 with an air of flight. The college was breaking up next 
 day because of the • conscription ; at that time ecclesi- 
 astical students were not exempted. 
 
 After lunch we sat in a delightful college room, and 
 told stories over our coffee and liqueur and talked of 
 many things. It might have been Oxford or Cambridge, 
 only I make bold to say the talk would have been less 
 lively at the old universities. Here there was no trace 
 
IN WHICH THE STORY IS TAKEN UP 309 
 
 of donnishness, and the clerics poked fun at each other 
 and told stories against each other as we had always 
 known it with priests, especially community priests, 
 who seem to remain light-hearted schoolboys to the 
 end. An old-fashioned courtesy and gentle manners, 
 with a youthful gaiety and the culture of reading and 
 thinking, make the memory of those hours a delightful 
 one. 
 
 The next day we returned to Mayo, bringing with us 
 the daughter who had decided that her place was with 
 us since Pat had gone to France. A day or two later we 
 were joined by a young Connaught Ranger, who had been 
 gassed on the 21st March. This boy, Malachy, had been 
 at Sandliurst with Pat, and had a queer tender admiration 
 for him. He used to tell how at Sandhurst Pat had 
 confuted some anti-Irish Irishmen. ' You see, Pat 
 knows Irish history backward, and he wiped the floor 
 with them,' he used to say. It is surprising the number 
 of people, young and old, whom Pat has contrived to 
 ' keep wise on things Irish ' as his friend, the M.O. out 
 in France, writes to me, adding that he has fallen asleep 
 to Pat's chanting of Irish poetry. 
 
 Now that Pat is with his 1st Dublins, in the great 
 29th Division, I recall with a sense of comfort Malachy's 
 assurance, ' As soon as Pat gets to the regiment there '11 
 be half a dozen of the men banded together to see that 
 he comes to no harm.' I hope it is true. It is certainly 
 comforting. 
 
 These are of the sayings that Pat would call ' priceless ' 
 — ^yet would tolerate in his mother. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 ft 
 
 THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS 
 
 On the afternoon of the 22nd of April, after we had seen 
 off a dear visitor who had been with us for a week, 
 Malachy, Pam, and I went for a walk. It was the 
 very moment of the year. You could scarce see the 
 grass for primroses : the beeches were out in their first 
 wonderful pale-green sUk, with here and there a copper 
 beech : the trees along the lakeside and the river were 
 things of incredible beauty. 
 
 Suddenly through the shimmer of leaves and sun we 
 saw an incredible sight. It was no less than Three 
 Tommies sitting arozv upon Old Lamherfs Tomb. It 
 sounds like the heading of a chapter of a Stevenson 
 romance. 
 
 At first we thought the dapple of light and shade 
 had deceived us, but, creeping earefuUy upon the Mount 
 from another direction, we were assured that the in- 
 credible was true. 
 
 Now it must be remembered that we had been feeling 
 bitterly our alienation from the War, that at the great 
 moment in the world's history we should be banished 
 to the wilderness from which our only touch with the 
 suffering, struggling world was by letter. Pam had 
 envied even those who were under air-raids. Anything, 
 anything, except the immunity (in a sense) which had 
 been forced upon us. 
 
 Chmbing the Mount to convince ourselves that these 
 were not indeed apparitions, we became aware of other 
 Tommies in the road carrying water. Still we refused 
 to believe that the thing was anything but mirage. The 
 
THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS 311 
 
 servants said there were a few soldiers searching for a 
 deserter whose clothes had been found in the Tomb. 
 That seemed hardly credible, though as yet there was a 
 bare sprinkling of soldiers. 
 
 One awoke next morning, for the second time in Mayo, 
 to a silence that could be felt. It was the Workless 
 Day, a quiet, hint of what would happen in case of con- 
 scription being enforced. Lying awake in the beautiful 
 morning, there was not a sound save the songs of birds. 
 ' Ah,' I said to myself, ' they have moved on. It was 
 only a halt.' I rose up with a disappointed feeling that 
 we had gone back to our solitude. I was at my prayers 
 in the Oratory when the bugle rang out. 
 
 No one coiild blame them for a late morning. The 
 great body of the troops had happened upon the Silent 
 Day. They had reached Tuam on their way to Clare- 
 morris when the hands of the clock stood at midnight. 
 Immediately the train stopped. The engine-driver and 
 his mate stepped off the engine. ' What is the meaning 
 of this ? ' asked the aghast Commanding-OfHcer. ' Very 
 sorry to inconvenience you,' was the reply, ' but we 
 can't go on tiU twelve o'clock to-night. We have our 
 orders.' 
 
 Threats and cajolings were all in vain. The pro- 
 tagonist roared with laughter when he told us. ' I had 
 threatened to shoot them if they didn't take us on,' he 
 said, ' and I might have had to do it, only my ammuni- 
 tion wagon went on fire. In the confusion the two 
 gentlemen disappeared quietly into the night.' 
 
 There were the poor soldiers at the gates of the 
 ancient town of Tuam, which boasts of two cathedrals, 
 a Catholic archbishop, and a Protestant bishop, with a 
 Diocesan College, convents, etc. Tuam was as dead as 
 aU the rest on the Silent Day, the shops all closed, the 
 inhabitants, many of them, gone away, some of those 
 left unfriendly to the soldiers. There was breakfast at 
 the hotel, the convent, and at the houses of private 
 citizens for as many as possible officers and men, but on 
 the whole it must have been short rations for men and 
 
312 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 horses ; and it was midnight again before the great body 
 of them got under weigh for Claremorris. 
 
 At least April had put on her loveliest garb for them. 
 There was a burst of hot weather just then. After all 
 the hardships the soldiers must have felt that they had 
 dropped into Paradise. We were very much invaded 
 by soldiers in those early days, and the R.M. was always 
 arriving in thi drawing-room with the information that 
 there were twenty Tommies, at least, bathing in front of 
 the haU door, at which a blushing young subaltern or 
 two or three would fly out to disperse them. 
 
 That first day we spent mainly in staring at the camp, 
 quite unabashed rustics gawking at the show. Malachy 
 was very amiable about it, although he said it was 
 awkward for a soldier to be standing about staring at 
 other soldiers, and they didn't really interest him. He 
 only hoped that if any recruits were got they would go 
 to the Rangers. If he had not been a cynic philosopher 
 he would have gone clean off his head on hearing that 
 ^he K.O.S.B.'s had got six recruits. 
 
 The new-comers were very uncertain of the atmo- 
 sphere they had walked into. They had been told that 
 Claremorris was a hotbed of Sinn Fein. One yoimg 
 officer, who was mess secretary to his battery, came and 
 talked to Malachy, asking him if there was danger. 
 ' Lots,' said Malachy ; ' they 've aU got rifles and they 
 may pot at you from behind any wall or hedge.' ' Good 
 Heavens ! ' said the young officer, who was a newly 
 married man — ' I wish I was back in Scotland ! ' 
 
 However, Claremorris is nothing if not business-like. 
 When we went to look for our provisions that day, 
 Claremorris afforded us nothing more than a small tin 
 of treacle. We saw the young officer buying onions in a 
 shop, having first borrowed the rifle oi an adjacent 
 Tommy. 
 
 Of course they did come into an atmosphere laden 
 with distrust and apprehension of them. Mayo, although 
 she has a good many sons in the War, had, for a long 
 time, been unacquaint with the spectacle of soldiers. 
 
THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS 313 
 
 Like ourselves, she had only touched the wounds of war. 
 Through some stupidity or bungling economy the 
 barracks of the Rangers were rotting in the towns, the 
 grass growing tall between the cobbles of the barrack- 
 squares. These were not Irish soldiers, but aliens of 
 whom the people knew nothing. They came to enforce 
 conscription, or the people thought they did. It was 
 a tragic hour, heavy with menace. If you can imagine 
 the feeling of Belgium when the Germans marched in 
 you have the feeling with which the Connaught peasants 
 looked upon the soldiers, except, that from end to end 
 of Belgium you would hardly find a peasant so un- 
 sophisticated as these. Indeed one did not need to be 
 a peasant to look upon the soldiers with foreboding. 
 One just hoped and prayed that they were come, not to 
 enforce conscription, but in case of a German landing.^ 
 One said the reassuring thing "over and over to every 
 peasant one met in those days, with a heart torn in two 
 between the people and the soldiers. 
 
 One had not to wait long to be assured of the personal 
 good feehng and friendUness of the soldiers. On the 
 Sunday morning our Father Michael referred at early 
 Mass to the presence of the camp. ' Be civil to the 
 soldiers,' he said, ' they are men Hke yourselves.' 
 
 At the later Mass there were some eighty soldiers who 
 came to the accompaniment of the pipes. They were 
 pious as only soldier men can be. The rapt and 
 respectful interest with which they listened to Father 
 Michael's sermon could not fail to be very agreeable to 
 him. They sang the Benediction hymns with devout 
 fervour, the harmonious voices — ^they were evidently 
 accustomed to congregational singing- — effectually drown- 
 ing the very scratch choir. 
 
 The two little soldier communicants who have knelt 
 Sunday after Sunday at the altar-rails, among the 
 peasants, must have done a good deal towards recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 ' We were told later that they came hastily, because vessels laden with 
 ammunition had left German ports for our coast. 
 
314 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 When the soldiers were formed up outside the church 
 the boys of the congregation, as though mechanically, 
 formed up opposite to them, imitating their movements. 
 
 But, at first, the atmosphere was heavy in the beauti- 
 ful spring weather. One of the first things we heard 
 was that Peter Walsh, at the bridge over against the 
 artillery-field, had sent his young niece who house-kept 
 for him home*to her own people. I am not sure it was 
 an unwise precaution, but the soldiers did not like it. 
 
 That first day, while Malachy ' stuffed ' the young 
 officer, an immensely tall, boyish-looHng officer, with an 
 odd, side-long gait, passed us by. The young officer 
 said : ' That is the CO., Lord Linlithgow.' 
 
 The next afternoon when I was all alone Lord 
 Linlithgow came to caU, and I had to rescue him from 
 the yapping pack of dogs with whom he was presently 
 to be on such terms of friendship. Then the rest of the 
 family came in, and Malachy was telling the CO. of a 
 Uvely scrap overseas. Malachy talks with the slowest, 
 most deliberate speech, and the CO. was listening, with 
 his profound interest in human nature, which we were 
 to know more about presently, looking beyond the story 
 to Malachy. 
 
 * One evening a fellow at the Mess got a letter, and it 
 was in it that the nth DubHns had been hooted going 
 into Aldershot. When he had read it he sprang to his 
 feet and on to the table, and began to read it aloud, and 
 then, waving it over his head, he shouted to the other 
 fellows that he was going out to teU the men. It was 
 an awful situation, for there were two thousand of our 
 men outside, and you only just had to set them going, 
 and God knows what would have happened. They'd 
 have been into the nearest English regiment. The 
 colonel called for order ; he is an Englishman, and a very 
 nice man, but they just didn't take any notice of him. 
 And the major called for order, but no one could hear 
 anything for the noise and the confusion ; and so off the 
 fellows rushed to tell the men that the nth Dublins 
 were hooted going into Aldershot. The Lord knows 
 
THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS 315 
 
 what would have happened onlv that hj the Mercy of 
 Heaven, assisted by the drink and a tent-rope that tripped 
 him up, the fellow who got the letter was down in a heap 
 and all the others a- top of him, and by the time they were 
 done swearing at each other, they 'd forgotten what they 
 were out for.' 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' When our fellows go over the top they '11 leave 
 nothing aUve that comes in their way. If a hen was to 
 cross their path a fellow would stoop down and wring 
 her neck and throw her to one side, not out of any ill 
 will to the hen, but just because they were out to kill.' 
 
 I had been learning something already of what ' The 
 Regiment ' means, much more than anything else, I 
 think, to the soldiers. I was to know more of it as 
 soldiers of the different regiments met in our drawing- 
 room. The cold nod, the glacial stare, which was all 
 they had for each other, were most amusing to the on- 
 looker. 
 
 The fairy-mushroom forest of tents had hardly sprung 
 up before the soldiers began to come in to see us. We 
 were the nearest house to the camp, which was in our 
 back-garden, so to speak, and practically the only house 
 for their entertainment within seven or eight miles. 
 We began to discover how exceedingly gentle some of 
 these soldiers could be. I think I have hardly ever known 
 civilians to be so curiously gentle. 
 
 The Royal Scots, of whom Lord LinHthgow was colonel, 
 gave a concert in the Town Hall a week or ten days after 
 their arrival. I went with misgiving and some un- 
 happiness as to what the people might think of me, 
 because, of course, my heart is always with my own 
 people. There was a very small audience of the towns- 
 people in the gallery at the back. I think they were 
 mostly young girls and children. AU went well, save 
 for the strange tragic atmosphere which yellowed the 
 lights to me and spoilt the music and songs, tUl, just as 
 the band was preparing for ' God Save the King,' the 
 quavering young voices in the gallery set up ' The Soldiers' 
 
3i6 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Song.' There was something pathetic about it to my 
 ear. It was their little protest of their own loyalty. 
 The soldiers looked at us. ' What is it ? ' ' It is the 
 Sinn Fein song,' we answered. Then the band broke out 
 into ' God Save the King,' and the thin young voices 
 were lost. 
 
 The day following that, Lord Linlithgow, who had not 
 been well, came to sleep under our roof, and remained 
 with us for some ten weeks. We had seen him once since 
 he called on us loping along by the hedgerows, watching 
 the ways of birds, in which he was almost as much 
 interested as the ways of men and women. Those were 
 ten delightful weeks, to which he brought gaiety, 
 sympathy, wit, and understanding. His French and 
 Irish blood gave him vivacity and quickwittedness ; to 
 use a Scottish phrase, which I had heard Lady Wemyss 
 use of herself, he was ' quick in the uptak',' beyond most 
 people I have known. 
 
 I have already counted it as a blessing that the two 
 responsible for the military in our part of the world 
 were as wise and as understanding as he and the Brigadier- 
 General, Lord Shaftesbury, both possessing Irish blood 
 and with quick sympathy. I suppose the Scottish blood 
 counted for a certain prudence in Lord Linlithgow. 
 Even before he had made the acquaintance of the R.M. 
 he had called on the P.P. and his curates and had drunk 
 a glass of wine with them. 
 
 I should have to be much further away from Lord 
 Linlithgow and those days than I am ever likely to be 
 to do anything like justice to his character. He had 
 deUghtful whimsies, behind which there was always real 
 good sense and goodness of heart. 
 
 One of the very first days — ^perhaps it was the first — 
 he went into a hotel in Claremorris to see some one or 
 other, and while he went upstairs he deposited his great- 
 coat and Glengarry in the coffee-room. When he 
 returned he foimd an unfriendly, somewhat bibulous 
 person reclining on his belongings with a mockiag eye, 
 which said that he did not intend to give them up, as 
 
THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS 317 
 
 a more responsible companion was endeavouring to 
 persuade him to. His bowler hat stood on the table. 
 Lord Linlithgow put it on and remarked quietly : ' I '11 
 get into trouble if I go out wearing this hat, but it is 
 nothing to the trouble you '11 get into if you go out 
 wearing my cap.' 
 
 The man roared with laughter, and immediately 
 rendered up the garments. 
 
 The first field day was or might have been a very 
 alarming occasion to the country people, if Lord 
 Linlithgow had not sent an officer to the adjoining 
 cottagers to tell the people they need not be afraid. 
 He himself met with a very hostile reception from an 
 old woman who came out of her cabin as he rode down 
 a boreen. ' What are you here for ? ' she asked, 
 shaking her fist at him. 
 
 ' Well,' he said gaily, ' to tell you the truth, I came to 
 ask you for a kiss, but as you are so disagreeable about it, 
 I suppose I 'd better be going.' 
 
 If she did not laugh she was no Irishwoman. 
 
 He was a very delightful talker. Some whimsey he 
 would take and expand, adding to, adorning and changing 
 it as he went. Wben he started a whimsical idea it was 
 like what A. E. said of James Stephens with his characters, 
 that he was like a puppy having a wild game with a doll, 
 that he rolled over it and shook it and tore it to pieces 
 with a most exquisite enjoyment. He is one of the 
 most whimsical talkers I have ever met. 
 
 Intimacy grew rapidly. I recall him, on his first visit, 
 taking photographs of his children out of his pockets 
 to show them to us, looking just a big boy, with a dark 
 head not unlike the birds he loved. He showed us the 
 twins and his ' eldest unmarried daughter ' aged five, 
 but the picture of the baby he could not find, and he 
 looked very rueful about it. ' Bad business/ he said, 
 'I can't find the baby.' 
 
 They must be delightful children. We heard many 
 good stories of the twins. One particularly affected 
 me. I had sent them a little book of manners for 
 
3i8 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 children, written by myself and illustrated by that 
 cl^rming artist, Charles Robinson. It is called A Little 
 Book of Courtesies. Lady Linlithgow had been reading 
 it aloud to the twins when the elder twin (they are six 
 years old) suddenly turned a deep red, and said in a 
 tone of conscience-stricken offence — ' I think it is a very 
 strange thing for a book like that to be sent to you by a 
 lady who does iiot know you.' No one knew what shaft 
 had gone home, or why. 
 
 Lord Linlithgow had an immense interest in the 
 simple people round about us while having little appetite 
 for the ordinary social round. After his day's official 
 work was done, he used to * strafe ' a fallen tree in front 
 of the house, and in the intervals, and during the day 
 as he came and went, he used to talk to Peter Walsh 
 who was mending the roof. Peter had known him first 
 when he was bird's-nesting and had made play with 
 him, thinking him a very simple, big boy to be interested 
 in such a simple thing. I used to hear the conversations 
 from my room where I was working. 
 
 ' Peter, did you see me " strafe " that tree .? ' 
 
 ' I did, your Lordship.' 
 
 ' What did you think of it ? ' 
 
 ' Indeed, I never thought gentlemen like your Lord- 
 ship did any work at aU.' 
 
 That was Peter's laugh. Generally the laugh was the 
 other way, a whimsical, tender laugh that could offend 
 no one. 
 
 Peter, by this time, had made great friends with the 
 Artillery, who were our first friends among the soldiers 
 and came and went constantly. There were tennis- 
 parties every afternoon, and in the long, light evenings 
 there was tennis and bridge. There were evenings when 
 all the officers of the battery were in the house or on the 
 tennis-lawn. The officers of aU the regiments came and, 
 went as they would. When we were out, as when we 
 were in, the doors stood open, and occasionally we came 
 in to find strangers on the tennis-lawn. We were very 
 glad to do so much or so little for the soldiers. 
 
THE COMING OF THE SOLDIERS 319 
 
 Captain Spence of the Artillery was the first officer 
 we spoke to, advising him that first day about the water 
 for the troops. He remains one of our best friends, 
 being a good Irishman as well as a good Scotsman and 
 the best of men and gentlemen. He had listened to Sir 
 Horace Plunkett's exposition of the Irish question when 
 they were fellow-travellers across the Atlantic. He has 
 a natural affinity for and sympathy with the Irish, and 
 he paid me the sweetest compliment I ever received 
 when he wrote to the R.M. after he had left us : ' I am 
 writing to say au revoir to Mrs. Hinkson, for she truly 
 is the Ireland I love and mean to return to.' When he 
 rode to Leenane in Connemara on a military mission, 
 the people came out and looked at him and said with a 
 sorrowful dignity, ' Why are you here ? You are not 
 welcome to us ? ' I think he felt that. 
 
 One day we met him and Captain Blake, his next in 
 command, giving old MuUahy, the herd on the estate, 
 his first motor drive : and it was very delightful to see 
 the little, old, simple peasant sitting up between the 
 two smart officers. 
 
 Peter liked the Artillery very much. He likes to recall 
 them when we meet and talk on the road. ' They were 
 very educated men,' he says, and when we convey Lord 
 Linlithgow's latest message : ' My duty to Peter 
 Walsh ! ' he says : ' See that now ! and the first time I 
 laid eyes on him I thought him just a simple boy 
 stravaigin' round the hedges after birds' eggs as many 
 a time I did myself. I was terrible ashamed of my 
 ignorant ways when I found out who he was. " Sure, 
 my Lord," said I, " I didn't know who you were at all." 
 " Never mind that, Peter," said he, looking at me with 
 his head on one side, " you were very kind to me about 
 the birds' nests." ' 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 » SOLDIER-TALK 
 
 When we heard that Lord Shaftesbury was the Brigadier- 
 General we were greatly interested, I especially because 
 of my devotion to the Wyndhams, he having married 
 Lady Grosvenor's elder daughter and Mr. Wyndham's 
 step-daughter. I remember the years when he was Lord 
 Mayor of Belfast, when I used to read with interest of 
 the fine doings at Belfast Castle, because of the associa- 
 tion. It seemed a fortunate chance that brought him 
 so near. 
 
 Writing in the autumn I seem already to have got the 
 prospective of the crowded summer. The packed weeks 
 ran out with incredible swiftness. It was hardly Monday 
 before Sunday was knocking at the door. But in the 
 aggregate it seems as long as the three stagnant years 
 that preceded it, for it is the hfe without happenings 
 that slips away like a dream, having no landmarks or 
 milestones. 
 
 The R.M. wrote as soon as we heard of his arrival, 
 asking him to supper on the Sunday, and he came, and 
 came pretty well all the Sundays of the early summer, 
 and later with less regularity since other people claimed 
 his society somewhat. He went aU round the house 
 examining things the first evening, and he must have 
 found a good many things that were homelike, there 
 being so many pictures and other things connected 
 with Saighton Grange and Mr. Wyndham and Lady 
 Grosvenor. 
 
 We had very joUy, musical evenings. Lord Shaftes- 
 bury has a beautiful voice and is a true artist. He sings 
 Irish songs most beautifully of aU, except, indeed, ' Annie 
 
 320 
 
SOLDIER-TALK 321 
 
 Laurie,' and his singing of that could not be bettered. 
 With the parson at the piano he would sing ' Dusk of 
 Autumn,' ' Must Lbe Bound While You go Free,' ' To 
 an Isle in the Water ' — all sorts of heavenly things with 
 a perfection and an artistry that made for pure delight. 
 The happy evenings used to end up with Gilbert and 
 Sullivan, Lord Linlithgov^ kneeling on a cushion by the 
 piano, being too tall to see the words if he stood upright 
 — ^he is six foot four and a half — every one else roaring 
 the choruses. It can be imagined what a pleasant world 
 had come to our doors in the fourth year of our life in 
 the West. 
 
 May was a most beautiful month, and I was able to 
 sit out-of-doors at work as I always did during the 
 English summers. I used to sit by the syringa-bush 
 facing the stretch of meadow, for in the extraordinarily 
 propitious weather meadow had come where there was 
 usually only moss, so that our English visitors refused 
 to believe that farming in the West of Ireland is the 
 gigantic struggle between Man and Nature which it 
 truly is. 
 
 I remember talking of these matters with Captain 
 Pitt-Rivers, whom I had already met in the privately 
 printed book about Julian and BiUy Grenfell which Lady 
 Desborough had allowed me to see. It was another odd 
 coincidence that he should have come to our doors. He 
 and Julian Grenfell were together in South Africa just 
 before the War, and were both great horsemen, so that 
 in the record of the racing, etc., sent home by Julian 
 Grenfell to his mother, the name of Pitt-Rivers often 
 occurred. Captain Pitt-Rivers lay on a rug on the grass 
 — some one was always coming up the slope from the 
 lake, or round the syringa-bushes from the green walk 
 by the river, which was so convenient a way for the 
 soldiers to arrive — ^and tried to take a rise out of me by 
 saying the Irish were lazy, while I retaliated with some 
 of toy experiences at English farmhouse lodgings. The 
 Staff had been highly diverted by the spectacle, seen from 
 the windows of their hotel in Claremorris, of cattle, 
 
 X 
 
322 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 sheep, pigs, and donkeys entering what they took to be 
 the door of a house. They thought of the animals 
 Hving with the family in a happy amity. It was really 
 nothing like so bad as that. It was merely that there 
 was a passage through the house — doubtless an over- 
 arched passage and quite separate till some one had 
 closed it by a door — ^to a little field behind. However, 
 we did not grudge the gilded youth their simple delight, 
 and in the case of Captain Pitt-Rivers his statements 
 were made with a humorous design to draw me out. 
 
 Sometimes it was Lord Linlithgow who came through 
 the green arches, objurgating the dogs with a pretended, 
 fearful ferocity for their yapping. Or again a group of 
 shy K.O.S.B.'s or the Artillery who always came with an 
 assurance of welcome. 
 
 I remember one special Sunday evening when we had 
 rather a large party to dinner. Captain Pitt-Rivers and 
 a very nice couple, the Moirs — he, home from B.C. to 
 see the War out, and a most charming, gentle, lovable 
 person — ^with the general and the parson, added to our 
 own party. While we were at dinner our dear ' Parish,' 
 as the children call Father Michael, came in, but refused 
 dinner, so sat in the dining-room joining in the con- 
 versation now and again with something quaint and 
 kind and merry. I heard Lord Linlithgow say to Mrs. 
 Pitt-Rivers afterwards how delightful it was to see and 
 hear the Parish, his face beaming with fun and good- 
 will, twinkling into the talk. He spoke as though the 
 occasion was one to be remembered long afterwards with 
 tenderness and dehght. 
 
 I remember the excessive annoyance of the Artillery 
 when, having been away at Leenane shooting, they came 
 back and a K.O.S.B. remarked on the doorsteps that 
 BrookhiU was K.O.S.B. preserve. 
 
 At first the Scotsmen used to sit round the drawing- 
 room or on the tennis-court and wish they were back in 
 Duddingston ; to which some of the Artillery replied 
 with a sigh for Cupar. We bore this for a time with 
 what patience we might, tiU one day Pam stood on the 
 
SOLDIER-TALK 523 
 
 hearthrug, with a red spot in either cheek and very 
 bright eyes, and ' strafed ' their ill-manners. The 
 Scotsmen could only gasp. In the midst of the strafing 
 the door opened and there entered a young gunner on 
 whom Pain swept round magnificently. 
 
 ' Mr. , are you English or Scotch ? ' 
 
 ' Three parts Scotch,' he replied, with happy con- 
 fidence. 
 
 ' Go,' she said, and pointed to the door. ' I have no 
 use for you.' 
 
 After that we heard no more of Duddingston or 
 Cupar. Indeed, as the summer advanced Dark Rosaleen 
 began to weave her spells on the soldiers. It was a very 
 good summer for the West of Ireland. Tennis and 
 sitting-out to watch the tennis were possible day after 
 day, and before the weather broke badly in September, 
 the tennis-court was dry enough for playing on in the 
 afternoon of a wet morning, for the water runs away 
 through the limestone incredibly fast, so that you may 
 have a drenching morning and dust blowing in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 When the time came for the soldiers to go — they 
 went steadily all through the summer — they always went 
 with regret. The young officer whom Malachy had 
 stuffed, who came in to sleep at Brookhill when the 
 weather broke, he being rheumatic, imparted to me 
 that he would like to stay at Claremorris ' for the 
 duration ' if he could find a little house for his wife. 
 Things were said to us about Ireland and Irish kind- 
 ness that undid some wounding things of the early 
 days, unintentionally wounding, for, as Lord Linlithgow 
 said one day, they would not have looked for Nationalism 
 in a house like ours. 
 
 The distrust of the people for the soldiers, at least 
 within any reasonable distance of the camp, had dis- 
 appeared. Doubtless it still affected the lonely places. 
 One lovely May day, when we had gone over to Foxford, 
 where the R.M. had a court, and we were being most 
 pleasantly entertained by the Sisters of Charity, who run 
 
324 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 the famous Foxford tweeds industry and were then 
 making ten thousand blankets a month for the British 
 Army, a beautiful young girl from the mountains passed 
 through the town, closely guarded by constabulary, on 
 her way to the County Asylum, gone mad through fear 
 of the soldiers and conscription. When I mentioned it 
 to Lord Linlithgow that evening he growled : ' Don't 
 rub it in ! ' It was a tragedy that those kindly soldiers 
 should caxise terror and hostility among the people. Of 
 course in such places as these where there is so much 
 cousinship and so much solitude there is always a certain 
 number of people, not quite sound mentally, whom a 
 fear or a danger may push over, and a good many of 
 these took the leap in those days. 
 
 But from many causes a kindly feehng grew up very 
 quickly between the soldiers and the people. One 
 realised how much alienation had been because of the 
 absence of the soldiers. One day I came upon the 
 humorous spectacle of a perfectly silent Royal Scot 
 sitting back to back with a perfectly silent Uttle farmer 
 who had given him a lift in ' th' ass-cart.' Both I 
 imagine represented the most taciturn of all varieties 
 of men. 
 
 That must have been about the time that the Corpus 
 Christi Procession coincided with a big army ' Stunt.' 
 We walked into the town where 
 
 Devotion gives each house a branch, 
 A bough, 
 
 to find the British Army sitting by the roadside, Lord 
 Linlithgow himself standing just outside the town ; it 
 was a furiously hot day. The military ' stunt ' was held 
 up till the procession was over : it took more than an 
 hour to pass. 
 
 On our way we met a certain major who represented 
 very fairly the old as opposed to the new army. The 
 new army is quite another matter. At its best I don't 
 know that it can be excelled. On our remarking to the 
 major : ' Are you held up by the procession ? ' he 
 
SOLDIER-TALK 325 
 
 replied : ' If we wanted to go through it we 'd go.' 
 This blunt statement, which I learnt later did not at 
 all represent the character of the man, made me very 
 angry at the time. Indeed we had several ' passages ' 
 with the major, not altogether friendly, about Irish 
 affairs. We called him Cromwell since he claimed 
 descent from the Protector, and his ideas as expressed 
 were certainly Cromwellian, but he was a good sort, and 
 a just man — is, I should say, as he is not in the past tense 
 happily. The old army was always somewhat hide- 
 bound. But our major, despite his Cromwellian uttei-- 
 ances, is a fine soldier and a gentleman. 
 
 Pat said once to some ladies at Youghal who were 
 abusing their country : ' If I was to go into an English 
 or Scottish house and begin defaming the country, I 
 should be asked to leave. Here it is a passport to social 
 success.' 
 
 I had occasion to repeat this saying once or twice 
 in the early days of the coming of the soldiers, but not 
 afterwards, and in few instances. They used to assure 
 me earnestly that I should never be asked to leave a 
 Scottish house no matter what I said. Some of them 
 seemed to have a natural affinity for Ireland, but one 
 could excuse the K.O.S.B.'s for being touchy, knowing 
 what the regiment means to the soldiers. Our difference 
 of opinion was confined to the K.O.S.B.'s. It ceased 
 after we had taken in a young officer from the wet camp 
 in an influenza epidemic, and ntirsed him back to health. 
 He was the last of three boys and he carried three wound 
 stripes. 
 
 The odd thing was that we found the K.O.S.B.'s or 
 some among them the gentlest of the gentle. It was 
 weird sometimes to catch what they were saying to 
 each other as they lay on rugs on the lawn watching the 
 tennis ; sometimes a word or a phrase revealed the 
 terrible things they had passed through ; but their eyes 
 were without stain though their faces were oddly lined. 
 By contrast the face of a boy of the same age who had 
 not been out was like a baby's. 
 
326 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 I remember one very gentle boy, who had been 
 smashed to pieces in a fall from an aeroplane, and was 
 also the last of three brothers, explaining to us almost 
 piteously about the Bachelor's Walk affair that Mrs. 
 Duffy was a very old lady, and could not have Hved 
 much longer. We had forgotten even the name of the 
 victim, but we thought the K.O.S.B.'s were always a bit 
 overclouded, a. bit on the defensive, because of Mrs. 
 Duffy. 
 
 One of them told me one day that when the War broke 
 out a battaHonof the K.O.S.B.'s was hastily brought home 
 from India. It wiU be remembered that the Bachelor's 
 Walk affair happened about nine days before the 
 declaration of war. The newly recalled battalion on its 
 arrival in France was hailed hy the EngUsh regiments 
 with the greeting : ' Hello, Jock, who MHed Mrs. Duffy?' 
 They, never having heard of Bachelor's Walk or Mrs. 
 DuSy, caught it up and repeated it to those who asked 
 them the question and those who did not, thinking it 
 great fun, tiU one day they met a battalion of the Dubhns, 
 in which regiment Mrs. Duffy's son was serving, and 
 then there was a scrap. 
 
 The Scotsmen, I dare say, have pawky humour, but it 
 was little in evidence. The only occasion on which I 
 was aware of it was one day on the road when a mounted 
 Tommy, riding at a breakneck pace, all but ran me down. 
 A friend, who was cheering him on, said to me faceti- 
 ously : ' Peter 's on his way to the canteen and it 's 
 nigh closin' time.' 
 
 There was one K.O.S.B., indeed, who used to tell 
 stories of a superior officer with an irresistible slow 
 humour, but it was limited to that one subject, and 
 although we grew quite attached to some of the K.O.S.B., 
 I am bound to confess that to sit in the drawing-room 
 of a wet Sunday with a dozen or so Scotsmen was a 
 fearful experience. 
 
 Altogether I think it was a summer of reconcihation. 
 We used to see a soldier now and again leaning over a 
 stone' wall having a chat with the small farmer, who. 
 
SOLDIER-TALK 327 
 
 with tke assistance of all his family, was engaged in 
 cropping. We heard that the soldiers sat down by- 
 many a cabin-fire and had hot cakes and milk and eggs 
 with the peasants who thought the rationing very 
 severe. 
 
 To study the soldier-man at close hand was a very 
 interesting study. One discovered many things about 
 him. After his loyalty to the Regiment comes his 
 loyalty to the men — ^in the case of the officers. When 
 the weather broke and the tents were flooded and the 
 once green field was a morass, even those on the rack 
 with rheumatism, lumbago, and sciatica, obstinately 
 refused the offer of a bed. ' We can't leave the men,' 
 they would say. Another thing was their compassion 
 for the dumb beast. They minded the weather less for 
 themselves than for their horses. The spectacle of the 
 horses, usually tired, overseas horses, as many of the 
 men were tired, overseas men, under the drenching rain 
 was a piteous one. The horse-lines were indeed de- 
 jected in those days, and it was dejection for any friend 
 of the horses. 
 
 One rather pathetic story is that of the Colonel's 
 mare, a beautiful, young thing, fiery and gentle. The 
 hardship in the mountain-glen, where the battery was 
 rained upon almost without ceasing for a fortnight, broke 
 her down. Peter Walsh gave her a stable, and com- 
 forted her with a good bed and good feeding : neverthe- 
 less she died. Peter's tale was : 
 
 ' Sure, I had great hopes of her, for she used to take 
 the oats and she always seemed better after them. I 
 think she 'd ha' lived if I could ha' kept her quiet, but 
 the noises of the camp were a great disturbance to her 
 mind. When she 'd hear the horses goin' by she 'd 
 make an attempt to struggle to her feet an' call to them ; 
 and the noise of the band, an' the bugles, an' even the 
 voice of the sergeants at the drill used to drive her 
 distracted. Then one day whin I thought she was 
 gettin' better, the horses wint by at the trot across the 
 bridge. She gev a great cry out of her, an' then she 
 
328 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 fell back on her haunches all sweatin' an' tremblin', an' 
 she rowled over stone dead.' 
 
 The Major whom we called Cromwell told me once 
 of a little Irish horse he had who was so affectionate 
 and so fond of company that he used to walk up the 
 walls of his box-stall to get after the groom, to whom 
 he was much attached. ' When the groom had to be 
 away,' said the !^ajor, ' I had to have my tea in the 
 box-staU ; he was quite contented as long as I stayed, 
 but he 'd be over the wall if I went away.' 
 
 One day, as we were passing by the camp, we heard 
 the queer, raucous shriek of a bird which we had been 
 hearing for some days at intervals without being able 
 to identify it. It revealed itself as a young jackdaw 
 which a soldier was carefully putting into a tree. We 
 stopped, and the R.M. asked if it had fallen from its 
 nest. Oh no, it was a pet and lived in the tent with 
 the men. When it wanted to get out it screamed, and 
 when it wanted to get in again it screamed. One could 
 imagine its sooty shape among the men. .Lord Lin- 
 hthgow had said one day : ' The men are never so 
 happy as when they crowd in a tent on a wet day. They 
 always break out into singing. They are warm and out 
 of the rain and no work.' One can imagine the jackdaw 
 presiding over those revels. 
 
 The soldiers were extremely fond of birds. There 
 were several officers as fascinated by the study of birds 
 as was Lord Linlithgow. They were usually the finest 
 stuff. Flowers, too. There was an exceedingly tall 
 officer, an inch in height above Lord Linlithgow, who 
 always entered a room with his head bent as though 
 he expected to strike the lintel of the door. He used 
 to go about with flowers and grasses in his hand asking 
 for their name and species. I beUeve the West of 
 Ireland has a flora all its own. 
 
 Then there was the Poet, who boldly labelled himself 
 so, saying to the astonished Major, when I was present 
 at a concert in camp, ' I am a Poet and wish to be 
 introduced to Mrs. Hinkson.' The Major was more 
 
SOLDIER-TALK 329 
 
 than astonished : he was scandaUsed : it seemed a 
 breach of diseipHne : such things could not have hap- 
 pened in the Old Army. Nevertheless, out of sheer 
 stupefaction he made the introduction, and the Poet 
 came next day and sat beside me on the tennis-lawn 
 and read his poems to me, quite oblivious of the sur- 
 roundings. In an interval he went and captured a 
 dragon-fly to show me the colours on its wings, and then 
 gently restored it to its bush. 
 
 There was the musician, too, who was also an artist. 
 His music was— is— most wonderful, for he does not 
 read a note, but can play for a whole evening the great 
 music of the world. I do not know his pictures, but 
 some day I shall, and I know I shall find them beautiful. 
 He loves poetry and the Celt : and he is gentleness of 
 gentleness, with a slow, velvety voice and velvety eyes, 
 and a tenderness for all things. One wonders why such 
 as these should be caught into the bloody maelstrom 
 where men kill and kill. 
 
 Yet somehow, with the knowledge of the gentleness, 
 comes a conviction that war is pre-ordained and will 
 continue. , They have brought away nothing brutal or 
 terrible from war. The boy, thrice wounded, with 
 terrible things to tell if he would tell them, chatters 
 about his bulldog and her delicious tricks. The Poet 
 once gave me, in a phrase, a terrible picture of men 
 coming out of battle. But the frenzy leaves the soul 
 unhurt : .the soul is asleep and the evil dreams pass 
 with waking. 
 
 ' Half an hour after the worst battle,' said Lord Lin- 
 lithgow, ' the soldiers are playing with the little French 
 children.' 
 
 And one of the most touching things is the strange 
 fatherliness of these boys of nineteen and twenty to 
 their men. 
 
 After I had written so much I made a discovery about 
 the boy we had nursed through influenza. He had been 
 so shy and silent while under our roof that we thought 
 of him as a little boy — ^he is not physically little at all. 
 
330 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 After that he used to come in with a happy air of assur- 
 ance, of being at home, which I loved to see in him. 
 Of his griefs — and he had great griefs in the deaths in 
 battle of his two brothers and especially the elder one, 
 who had been a kind of father-brother to him, the 
 parents being in India — ^he said as little as a boy says. 
 Then one evening, when there were men present and 
 there was man-l*lk of horses and racing, Eric came out 
 unexpectedly. He talked, and talked well and with 
 knowledge, and his voice was a good rich man's voice. 
 Then came another evening when we sat round a glowing 
 wood fire — ^it was after the weather had broken, and the 
 soldiers used to come in from the camp to get warm — 
 Eric suddenly drifted into talk of the war. Ypres— oh 
 yes, he had been in Ypres in 1915. It was very gay 
 then, though the shells were always coming over. Busi- 
 ness was very brisk, theatres and cinemas open. Now 
 and again there would be a scamper from the Market- 
 place into hiding, and a shell would burst. They seemed 
 to know how to locate the Market-Place. One day a 
 shell burst, blowing out one window of a little shop of 
 two windows. As soon as the debris had settled down 
 a little, the girl who looked after the shop picked up the 
 boxes of sardines and bottles of olives which had sur- 
 vived the shell, and put them in the unharmed window. 
 
 ' When I went back in '17,' said Eric, ' there was 
 nothing but black flatness. Everything was levelled 
 except here and there a jagged bit of wall standing up 
 amid the desolation. The Cloth HaU — oh yes, it 's gone 
 right enough — just a bit of crumbling wall about the 
 height of this room. We climbed up to a church window 
 and looked in. The carvings were splendid. There 
 were Hfe-size figures framing every window. Of course 
 there was no glass, but we could see the pictures on the 
 walls. The colours had all run and gone different. I 
 tried to locate some places, but it was no use. The 
 streets had disappeared.' 
 
 He' stopped to laugh over the tale of a lady who 
 thought that the position of a certain regiment must be 
 
SOLDIER-TALK ^ 331 
 
 healthier since they were on a ridge. We asked if there 
 was anything in the alarmist story of a returned soldier, 
 that the Boche was preparing a desert for our troops to 
 winter in. ' Not a bit of it,' he said. ' They have 
 wintered in the desert — ^nothing but shell-holes and 
 black desolation for miles. We are occupying ground 
 that has not been reduced to such desolation. 
 
 ' Lens and Armentieres will be no good to us. Both 
 are full of gas. In Armentieres the civilian population 
 lie dead in the cellars, where they took refuge when the 
 Boche gas began coming over, knowing nothing of gas. 
 No one could enter the "place. 
 
 ' When we joined up in '14 the French used to roar 
 with laughter at the British little boy officers. Just 
 imagine the French sous-officier, thirty-five years of age, 
 with a great beard flowing over his chest, laughing till he 
 cried at the little seventeen and eighteen year old boys from 
 the Public Schools and Sandhurst. They are magnificent 
 fighters, the French — ^very different in their ways from 
 us. I 've known them to get tired of the trench and go 
 off to an estaminet for a drink. When they came back 
 they would find the Boche in the trench. They would 
 take it back and a bit more with it. We couldn't under- 
 stand the French tactics at first. When they began 
 retreating, we used to think they 'd never stop till they 
 got to the sea. Then they 'd begin coming back. . . . 
 My word ! 
 
 ' The French, for all they have the biggest account 
 with the Boche, don't nag at him, nor the Boche at them, 
 as we nagged all day long. They don't bother out of 
 fighting time. One day some of our fellows went into 
 the French line. There, right under their fire were 
 the Boche playing about. " Do you see him ? " our 
 fellows asked. " Oh yes, he comes over every day at 
 this hour." " Hadn't you better train a machine-gun 
 on him ? " They did.' 
 
 In the days when I thought Eric a little boy I should 
 have liked to kiss his three wound-stripes if it were not 
 too sentimental a thing to do, besides the likelihood of 
 
332 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 its making Eric profoundly unhappy. An Irish soldier 
 told me the other day that when he came out of hospital 
 and entered a London 'bus, every one stood up at sight of 
 his wound-stripes. One felt the pity of it, that through 
 stupidity in handling the most martial-minded of people 
 such a thing was little likely to occur in a Dublin tram. 
 
 Eric came to see us one day with his new acquisition, 
 Mary, a chestnut mare. (I 'm afraid her whole name was 
 Little Mary. That is something I have never forgiven 
 Sir James Barrie. Why not Little Lizzie or Little Jane 
 or anything else you lie, without profaning the hoHest 
 name on earth ?) Mary was an extremely restless lady, 
 walking round and round while Eric held on to her bridle, 
 his face against her face, she trying to kick any one or 
 anything within reach. Eric loves even her sins. He 
 accounts it a merit, a charm in her, that she wiU not 
 allow herself to be saddled by a groom, but kicking and 
 squealing kept Eric himself in the loose box for a quarter 
 of ah hour tiU suddenly she gave in, with an amazing 
 sweetness. ' Like a child that refuses to put on its hat,' 
 says Eric, ' and suddenly gives in.' 
 
 One rather trembles over the wounds when one hears 
 of those encounters with Mary. One through the lungs, 
 one through the neck and cheek, one through the arm. 
 
 Eric's companion when he brought us Mary to 
 approve was the boy who fell from the aeroplane. He 
 trained race-horses and rode them in civil life, and is a 
 splendid horseman — ^with two broken legs and a foot 
 reduced to pulp, to say nothing of the upper part of his 
 body and face. ' His thighs are all right,' says Eric, 
 ' but of course if he was thrown, it would be aU over with 
 him,' They are the dearest friends. ' Leonard is a 
 splendid fellow,' says Eric with glowing eyes, and goes 
 on to tell how, when they had released Leonard's shattered 
 body from his machine, in the paved yard after the 
 concreted house-top, he asked for a cigarette. ' He 
 ought to be dead, of course,' says Eric, ' but after 
 eighteen months in hospital he came back to us. He is 
 making all the regiment horsemen. It is such a dis- 
 
SOLDIER-TALK 333 
 
 appointment to him that the officers' race at the Red 
 Cross Meeting is off. He was so keen to ride.' 
 
 Eric speaks of himself and Leonard and a third one as 
 ' we three crocks.' The third crock was wounded in 
 the face terribly. I have only seen the side which is 
 round and boyish. ' He won't go out again,' says Eric, 
 ' because there 's no gas-mask to fit him. That is why 
 he got so terribly gassed in March, the mask was no 
 protection.' 
 
 Wonderful, pitiful, heroic, great-hearted ! Adjectives 
 fail one thinking of these boys who are broken in the 
 body, unbroken in the spirit. 
 
 Eric is a K.O.S.B. It was my turn to feel abashed 
 when I having said carelessly that his new station would 
 be near Diiblin, he answered with a shade on his face : 
 ' I do not want to go to Dublin.' A thousand pities 
 that human beings, singly or in the mass, should so hurt 
 and misjudge each other. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVl 
 
 THE END OF THE SUMMER 
 
 There was much talk during the summer which it is too 
 soon to reproduce, even if one had kept it. Here is a 
 story told by an army chaplain, who was with the troops 
 at the first disastrous Battle of Gaza. He rode out to 
 meet the casualties coming in, and they were bad enough. 
 His eye was arrested by a man in a stretcher who did 
 not seem to be wounded. 
 
 ' I haven't seen you before,' he said ; ' are you one of 
 mine ? ' 
 
 ' I am. Father, God forgive me.' 
 ' I never saw you at confession ? ' 
 ' I haven't been to confession for ten years.' 
 ' What 's the matter with you ? Are you wounded ? ' 
 ' I haven't got a scratch. Father, only the rifle took to 
 shakin' in my hand so I couldn't get a grip on it. They 
 seen I wasn't shammin', so they said, " We don't know 
 what the divil to do wid ye at all. You 're no use here. 
 Better go back to the clearin' station an' see what they 
 can do for you, for if ye stay here it 's shootin' yerself 
 or some one else ye 'U be." Wid that I got in the 
 stretcher an' here I am.' 
 
 ' Would you like to go to confession now ? ' 
 ' I would. Father. I won't deny it — ^it was the terror 
 kem upon me wid me sins starin' me in the face made me 
 drop die rifle. The teeth chattered in me head whin I 
 thought o' what was before me.' 
 
 So Father P., riding beside the stretcher, heard the 
 sinner's confession. And no sooner was it over than 
 the penitent leaped from the stretcher, seized his rifle, 
 and : 
 
THE END OF THE SUMMER 335 
 
 * I 'm as strong as a lion now,' he said, ' I 'm goin' back ! ' 
 
 And go back he did, and gave a very good account of 
 himself. 
 
 One had many sidelights on the psychology of the 
 soldiers. Some one said that he had seen a soldier 
 sitting on the body of a dead German eating his dinner, 
 because the ground was wet, and from no more barbarous 
 motive. On the other hand, they had an extraordinary 
 respect for graves. Anything like desecration was hardly 
 to be thought of. If a soldier was impelled to pinch a 
 very fine German helmet from a grave he did it guiltily 
 and secretly. 
 
 Here is a story of a German submarine which I think 
 has not got into the papers. Somewhere in the North 
 Sea a U-boat suddenly bobbed up under the bows of a 
 cruiser, and signalled that it desired to surrender.- 
 ' We know that game,' said the cruiser, ' we 're going 
 to blow you to bits in a minute.' 
 
 ' Don't do that,' signalled the submarine, ' it 's quite 
 square. We want badly to surrender.' ' Send off your 
 commander then in a boat.' ' We can't.' ' Very well, 
 then. We '11 blow you to bits.' ' Don't do it. We 're 
 in earnest.' 'Send off your officers then in a boat.' 
 ' We can't.' ' Why not ? ' ' Come and see.' 
 
 After much parley the cruiser sent off a boat. In the 
 cabin of the submarine they found the officers laid out 
 neatly in a row with their throats cut. The crew had 
 mutinied. 
 
 ' The old Boche,' said Lord Linlithgow, ' surrenders 
 hardly. One day my fellows brought in prisoners, the 
 colonel of a crack Prussian regiment among them. I 
 expressed a hope that he would be as comfortable as 
 possible in the circumstances. He said he had not 
 expected to find so much consideration. Some of the 
 hoys had been a bit rough with him. He was a very 
 agreeable fellow. That night when he was left alone he 
 ate his watch — ^pounded the glass and swallowed it and 
 some of the wheels and things — to commit suicide, in 
 fact.' 
 
336 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 ' Very often on Sunday evenings the talk was political 
 at the dinner table. Music filled up the evening. I 
 have said that Lord Shaftesbury is a very good Irishman, 
 with a natural affection for and understanding of the 
 people. One would like to see him in a high adminis- 
 trative post in Ireland. He is a great friend of Sir 
 Horace Plunkett, and through his work on the Congested 
 Districts Board 4ie is at home in Connaught, especially 
 with the priests, who hold the key to the Irish heart. 
 
 One story he told us was of Belfast in one of the years 
 of his Mayoralty, a year of big riots even in the history 
 of Belfast. Things were looking very nasty indeed. 
 The military and police were called out. A Belfast 
 rioter has no respect for mUitary or police beyond any 
 other men. The men from ' the Island,' i.e. Harland 
 and Wolff's shipbuilding yards — ^the same who chalked 
 up ' To Hell with the Pope ! ' all over the ships' sides 
 when the Convention went to visit Belfast — were armed 
 with the missiles so deadly in a Belfast row, the sharp 
 pieces of steel used in shipbuilding which cut like a 
 sword. (To digress — it was said in Ireland at the time 
 of the Titanic disaster that every sheet and plank of the 
 vessel was scrawled over with ' To Hell with the Pope ! ' 
 and worse, so that she was ill-fated.) Lord Shaftesbury, 
 whom I take to be gifted with the most excellent common 
 sense, took his courage in both hands. ' Withdraw both 
 the mihtary and the police,' he said, ' and I wiU be 
 answerable for the safety of the city.' He had some 
 difficulty in persuading them to do as he asked, but 
 finally they agreed. He called together then the 
 magistrates and others representing both sides. Joe 
 Devlin was among the Cathohcs. There is a point 
 where the Falls Road and the ShankiU Road meet, 
 each being the stronghold of the Cathohc and the 
 Orange sections respectively. The town was at fever- 
 heat, each party seeking the blood of the other. ' You 
 vsnU keep the Falls Road back,' he said to one section, 
 and to the other : ' And you will hold back the Shankill 
 Road.' 
 
THE END OF THE SUMMER 337 
 
 It was agreed. A strong cordon was drawn across the 
 exit from these historic thoroughfares, and the leading 
 men of each section kept back their followers, who all 
 the night through strained at the leash. With the 
 morning the danger was over. The weary people went 
 home to bed, their passions spent, and Belfast was safe 
 till another Twelfth of July came round. 
 
 He had a high opinion of Carson as a leader, coupling 
 his name with Parnell's. That, we old Parnellites, did 
 not altogether accept, but we agreed that he was perhaps 
 the only leader with a genius for leadership in our day. 
 I have heard an advanced Nationalist say : ' Give us 
 Carson for a leader and we 'U fight the battle over 
 again ! ' 
 
 One evening Lord Shaftesbury talked- of the Ulster 
 Covenant with a striking reminiscence. 
 
 ' I sat in the Ulster HaU,' he said, ' when ten thousand 
 men stood up to repeat the words of the Covenant after 
 Carson. It was an extraordinary sensation as I looked 
 around me — ^I, alone, of all that multitude, seated. 
 " Repeat the words of the Covenant after me," said 
 Carson. " I pledge myself to resist by every means . 
 in my power, under any circumstances, now and for 
 ever any attempt to impose Home Rule upon Ireland." 
 How could any one take such a pledge ? " Now and for 
 ever — ^under any circumstances." How could any one 
 bind himself to remain unalterable under any circ^im- 
 stances ? ' 
 
 He was pessimistic about the future, saying that 
 Ulster was very angry with the rest of Ireland and in a 
 bad frame of mind for negotiation. One of us said : 
 ' Ireland is very angry with Ulster,' 
 
 He said : ' Yes, that is so. Unless the rest of Ireland 
 agreed to fall in with Ulster there is no possibility of 
 peace between them.' I said : ' You mean unless the 
 Irish were to become Protestants.' He said ' Yes : that 
 is what it amounts to : and that, of course, wiU be 
 never, so there will never be peace till one segtion or 
 the other is driven out.' 
 
338 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Lord Linlithgow said one evening :~ ' If there had ever 
 been a majority of the EngUsh people in favour of Home 
 Rule Ireland would have had it long ago. Various 
 political leaders brought their followers up to the Home 
 Rule fence, but the EngHsh people have never been 
 behind them.' 
 
 That was a shrewd observation, the truth of which one 
 recognised. • 
 
 He said one day before he left : ' I have not changed 
 my opinions a bit, R.M.' — we were not so sure of that 
 — ' but one thing I have discovered. The Irish need a 
 Catholic aristocracy.' 
 
 There he was wrong. The Irish aristocracy counts 
 for Uttle to the Irish people because in the main it is 
 alien to them : perhaps because, like the French, only 
 latent in the Irish, they have a -capacity for gentxine 
 democracy. That is to say they would acclaim the 
 aristocracy of beauty, brains, manners ; the accident of 
 birth which gives the descendant of filibustering soldiers 
 a coronet makes little genuine appeal to them. As for 
 a Catholic aristocracy, they would be more critical of 
 that if it was not with them. There is none so detested 
 and resented in Ireland as the Catholic who is not with 
 the people. 
 
 Only with these two was there any talk of politics. 
 The soldiers had a simple way of counting all politicians 
 as rascals, and so dismissing them from their tboughts. 
 
 The golden summer ran out all too soon. There were 
 the mornings when one wakened to the sound of martial 
 music and knew that a draft was going out to France ; 
 and, constantly, this or that young flannelled figure dis- 
 appeared from the group that gathered every afternoon 
 on the tennis-lawn. 
 
 Some of those we liked best went. Some we only kept 
 because of their sad immunity through their injuries. 
 The officers' wives, with whom we had made friends 
 went — ^Mrs. Pitt-Rivers and Mrs. Moir, and a little dear, 
 Mrs. Whigham, who was literary and had actually 
 achieved publication in the Morning Post. And the boys ; 
 
THE END OF THE SUMMER 339 
 
 there was MacBee — that was not exactly his naihe — 
 the keen, handsome, grave, young soldier who talked like 
 a father of those rascals, the band boys ; and there was 
 Prior, for whom we had an affection because he seemed 
 to typify young English,^gentle boyhood, and was a little 
 like OUT Pat. 
 
 With certain people I shall always associate the 
 summer. There was Mrs. Pitt-Rivers who used to come 
 up the long avenue cool as a lily, when the mists of heat 
 were brooding over the land. She was an oddly ex- 
 quisite and exotic figure in Claremorris. She was not 
 only beautiful and very charming, but she was kind. I 
 remember a day when we went to Clonbur, where the 
 R.M. has a monthly court. It is an Irish-speaking 
 district, so the proceedings of the court are usually racy 
 out of the ordinary. The monthly court in such remote 
 places is a sort of social event to which every one crowds. 
 But it was ' Syrian ' iweather, and after we had dropped 
 the R.M. at his court we went on to the Ferry, which lies 
 just between Lough Mask and Lough Corrib. The 
 Ferry sits in the lap of the mountains. It was one of 
 the days of scintillating heat when the sand burns your 
 eyes. Even motoring, the heat was intolerable. I keep 
 an impression of Mrs. Pitt-Rivers, young,> beautiful, and 
 kind, her lily-like coolness as much undisturbed by the 
 heat as one of the Madonna lilies which she resembled 
 as closely as a woman can resemble a flower, leading me 
 through the boulders and over the blinding sands, too 
 dazzling for my purblind eyes, to the water's edge. We 
 lunched afterwards at a little house which might have 
 stepped out of Cranford, with a garden which had 
 many gardens contained within it — ^not a big garden, but 
 a lovable, small garden, every inch of which carried a 
 new delight, what with herb-garden and water-garden, 
 kitchen and flower-garden, winding walks and shrub- 
 beries, such a garden as a woman will make for herself, 
 somehow weaving her life and thoughts, her joy and her 
 sweet-bitterness, into its mazes. 
 
 Again, there came Lady Shaftesbury, soft and warm 
 
340 THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW 
 
 and kind, to give me assurance of what her mother, Lady 
 Grosvenor, with whom I have long corresponded, but 
 never met, must be Hke. She came and went, and on 
 her second morning visit I was out for my morning 
 walk, and so missed her : but I always keep an im- 
 pression of something fair and good and gracious with 
 an enveloping warmth, one of the most beautiful things 
 of the beautiful summer. 
 
 Those days have already taken on the glamour which 
 comes with distance. 
 
 Among the soldiers who came to us that summer was 
 the Colonel of the West Kent Yeomanry, through whose 
 deUcious park at Southborough we walked in the South- 
 borough days. When we were at our cottage on South- 
 borough Common I had some little correspondence with 
 him because of his manorial rights over the Common. 
 How little I could have thought, when we admired his 
 Alderneys, heard his peacocks scream and inspected the 
 Boer pony he had brought home from South Africa, by 
 favour of a friendly groom, that I should, in a few years' 
 time, be receiving him as a guest in a house in the West 
 of Ireland. 
 
 I wondered if he would take up the gage I had thrown 
 down to Southborough the first day he came. I was 
 pretty sure he would not, from all the pleasant things 
 I had heard concerning him. But I said, as we shook 
 hands : ' Have you ever heard of me as Katharine 
 Tynan ? ' 
 
 ' I fancy I have,' he said, and his eyes twinkled. 
 
 ' Kent and Sussex Courier ? ' I said. He laughed, and 
 then I knew he knew. 
 
 The camp remained long enough to take away many 
 of those we liked best. They were always going. It 
 remained long enough to be half-drowned in September, 
 when the tradition of the ' Poor Man's Harvest ' month 
 failed, and after a lunar rainbow there came seventy-two 
 hours of flooding rain, winding up with a thunder-storm 
 and a deluge, only to begin again with heavy showers 
 for the rest of the month. The camp was a slough, a 
 
THE- END OF THE SUMMER 341 
 
 morass. It was hardest on the horses, though all pos- 
 sible was done for them. The men passed by the win- 
 dows wretchedly drenched all day long, 6n their way 
 to dry their clothes in the laundry, where a big fire had 
 been built up ; yet they did not go sick. As one of the 
 officers said : ' If they would only go sick there would 
 be relief in the breaking-up of the camp.' Yet even 
 then they did not want to leave Claremorris — ^not even 
 the CromweUian Major, whom we came to like more 
 and more, who spent his last evening with us, with Eric, 
 the boy we had come to love and to admire. It must 
 have been that witch. Dark Rosaleen. Of course they 
 had discovered the country joys for themselves, and 
 how much better they were than cinemas. 
 
 After Lord Linlithgow left us we had another inmate 
 of the house in a young officer of whose manners I once 
 said : ' No woman need ever think that he thinks of 
 her as old, for he will not know she is old.' Through 
 his presence in the house, we, the exiles, the castaways 
 of Connaught, came, as I used to write to my friends 
 proudly, to have our war news twice daily by wireless 
 and to set our watches and clocks by the Eiffel Tower. 
 
 So all that was plainly what we were waiting for 
 during the three years in which we were cut off from a 
 world at war. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen, the Marchioness of, 15, 
 100-112, 141, 169, 174, 178, 24.1. 
 
 Aberdeen, the Marquess ol, 52, loo- 
 112, 135, 140, 142, 143, 145, 149, 
 166, 167, 169, 178, 241. 
 
 A. E. (Russell, George), 18-25, 28-30, 
 65, 88, 95, 96, 170, 187, 241, 247, 
 255, 256, 293, 297, 300. 3°8, 309- 
 
 339- 
 Alexander, Miriam, 97. 
 Anti-Pamellisra, i. 
 
 Balfour, the Right Hon. A. J., 246. 
 Barlow, Jane, 98, 99. 
 Beer, Margreita, 121. 
 Bellingham, Sir Henry, Bart., 138. 
 Bellingham, Captain Roger, 112. 
 Bourne, Cardinal, 125. 
 Brassey, Lord, 303. 
 Brookhill, 233-241. 
 Bullen, A. H., 262. 
 
 Cadogan, Earl, 247. 
 Campbell, Joseph, ig, 72. 
 Campbell, Nancy, 72. 
 Civic Exhibition, 134, 136, 139. 
 Coates, John, 93, 94. 
 Cockbum, Sir George, 45, 46. 
 Colthurst, Captain, 81, 82. 
 Colum, Padraic, 24, 28, 81. 
 Connolly, James, 308. 
 Corinthian Club, 1 00. 
 Cornkill, The, 50, 260. 
 Croke, Archbishop, 42. 
 
 DE VaLERA, E., 286. 
 
 de Vesci, Evelyn, Lady, 252-259. 
 Dudley Viceroyalty, 31. 
 Dufferin, Marchioness of, 49, 50, 52. 
 DufFerin, Marquess of, 45, 53. 
 Dunsany, Lady, 65-73. 
 Dunsany, Lord, 29, 30, 65-73, 288, 
 289, 292, 293, 299. 
 
 Easter Week, 74. 
 
 342 
 
 Elcho, Lord, 253-255. 
 
 Emly, Lord, 412. 
 
 Esmonde, Lady, 300. , 
 
 Esmonde, Sir Thomas, Bart., 300. 
 
 Farley, Cardinal, 125, 126. 
 Forbes of Rothiemay, Mrs., 118, 123, 
 124. 
 
 Garvin, J. L., 34, 35, 102. 
 
 Gasquet, Cardinal, 127, 128. 
 
 Genesis of Irish Rebellion, 74-82. 
 
 Gibson, Captain, 84, 85. 
 
 Gibson, Mr. Justice, 88, 89. 
 
 Gilbert, Lady, 100. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 63, 100, 102, 
 
 103. 
 Glenconner, Lady, 61, 253. 
 Gordon, Mrs. Ogilvie, 253. 
 Granard, Lord, 44. 
 Graves, A. P., 3. 
 Gregory, Lady, 15. 
 Grenfell, Julian, 306. 
 Grey, Earl, 180-187. 
 Grosvenor, Countess, 63, 321. 
 
 Hamilton, Mrs. Rowan, 45-55, 89, 
 
 93. '42- 
 Hannay, Canon, 270. 
 Harcourt, Lady, 54, 55. 
 Harrel, Lady, 51, 56-64. 
 Harrel, Sir David, 56-64, 92, 150, 
 
 151, 156, 165, i6g, 174, 180. 
 
 Ilchester, Countess of, 48. 
 Irish Literary Society (London), 3. 
 Irish limes, 2. 
 Italy, the Queen of, 118. 
 
 Johnson, Lionel, 241. 
 
 Kennev, J. Fitzgerald, 276, 277. 
 Kettle, T. W., 81. 
 Killanin, Lord, 41, 48, 62, 276, 283, 
 286, 299. 
 
INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 Larkin, James, 7, 8, 308. . 
 
 Lawless, the Hon. Emily, 94. 
 
 Ledwidge, Francis, 29, 286-298. 
 
 Lely, Sir Frederick, 138. 
 
 Lennox, Lady Sarah, 47, 49. 
 
 Liberty Hall, 78. 
 
 Linlithgow, the Marquess of, 315-320, 
 
 322. 323. 3^5) 3^9. 330. 336. 339. 
 
 342. 
 London, Bishop of, 176. 
 Lyttelton, Lady, 5, 14, 15. 
 Lyttelton, Lucy, 14. 
 Lyttelton, Sir Neville, 14. 
 Lytton, Lady, 32. 
 Lytton, Lord, 32. 
 
 Macaulay, Rose, 96, 97. 
 MacDonagh, Thomas, 8 1 . 
 MacDonnell, Lord, 62, 300. 
 MacMillan, Miss Chrystal, 123. 
 MacNeill, Professor Swift, 1 34. 
 M'Neill, Professor John, 79. 
 Margharita, Queen Dowager of Italy, 
 
 117, 118. 
 Marlcievicz, Madame, 279, 281-283. 
 Mathew, Frank, 127, 128, 186. 
 Maynooth College, 309. 
 Merry del Val, Cardinal, 116, 126. 
 Meynell, Wilfrid, 32. 
 Morley, Lord, 62. 
 Muldoon, John, M.P., 91, 92. 
 Muihall, Mrs. Marian, 116, 125-127. 
 
 Napoleon, 45. 
 
 Nathan, Sir Matthew, 206. 
 
 Nicolson, Lady, 50. 
 
 O'Brien, Barry, 194, 214. 
 O'Brien, Lord, 43. 
 O'Brien, Murrough, 5, 6. 
 O'Connor, Mrs. T. P., 210. 
 O'Hara, Rev. Denis, 60, 150, 157. 
 O'Neill, Rev. George, 14. 
 O'RahiJly, The, 79. 
 
 Parnell, C. S., 32-34, 84. 
 Parnellism, i. 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, 14. 
 
 Pitt-Rivers, Captain, 322, 323. 
 
 Pitt-Rivers, Mrs., 340. 
 
 Plunket, Lady, 49. 
 
 Plunkett, Count, 79-86. 
 
 Plunkett, Countess, 80. 
 
 Plunkett, Sir Horace, 18, 19, 155, 
 
 244, 245. 3°0; 303. 305. 32°> 337- 
 Price, Major, 11. 
 
 Rebellion, The, 188-195. 
 Redmond, John, 144, 214, 215, 282. 
 Redmond Major William, 145, 282. 
 Rome, in-133. 
 Ross, Sir John, 29, 30, 96-97. 
 Ross, Lady, 29, 30. 
 ' Ross, Martin,' 240. 
 Russell, Father, 5, 7, 12, 13. 
 
 Shaftesbury, the Earl of, 321, 337, 
 
 338. 
 Shaftesbury, the Countess, 341. 
 Shaw, George Bernard, 300. 
 Sheehy Skeffington, F., 81-82, 149. 
 Sime, Sidney, 67-68. 
 Smith, Reginald, K.C., 260-262. 
 Southborough, 263-268. 
 Star, The, 304, 305. 
 Stephens, James, 24, 25, 28, 29. 
 
 Tyrrell, R. Y., 5, 93. 
 Tyrrell, Mrs., 93. 
 
 Vanutelli, Cardinal, 125, 126. 
 Vice-Regal Lodge, the, 166, 167, 169. 
 Volunteers, the Irish, 90, 144. 
 Volunteers, the Ulster, 90. 
 
 Weldon, Sir Anthony, 169. 
 Wells, H. G., 18, 69, 70, 71. 
 Wemyss, Countess of, 15, 194, 252- 
 
 257- 
 Wyndham, George, 48, 53, 61-63, 
 
 150, 151, 221. 
 
 Wyndham, Percy, 253. 
 Yeats, W. B., 14, 25, 30, 34. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constabli, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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